When the streamliner train stops at Black Rock, Nevada for the first time in four years, a one-armed stranger, John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), dressed in a suit, alights. Nobody knows why he came, and he tells no one. The stranger was received like someone who'd just flown into North Korea as a stowaway. “You look like you need a hand,” one nasty wag says to him. Black Rock doesn't roll out the red carpet for visitors. It has too many dark secrets to keep under wraps. Things get worse for the unwelcome visitor after he starts asking questions about the mysterious disappearance of a Japanese farmer named Komoko.
That begins Bad Day at Black Rock, a 1955 film that's all but forgotten. A shame, because it's a taut thriller with stunning cinematography and a top-notch cast. Director John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Gunfight at the OK Corral) substitutes a sense of foreboding for the standard staples of the Western. He incorporates elements of film noir to give it a pervasive sense of menace from the beginning. There are no posse’s, no great horse-riding scenes in the mountains, and no whiskey drinking, poker playing, and whoring in saloons.
But Sturges makes one Western trope the heart of the film: a lone stranger rides into town, confronts lawlessness, and forces a moral showdown. Rather than taking place in the “old West,” this film is set in 1945. It's often called a neo-Western. Instead of men on horses chasing other men on horses, it has a crackerjack car chase scene. Its hero doesn't even have a gun. He wins the final showdown by coming up with an impromptu Molotov cocktail while ducking bullets as he hides underneath a Jeep. Macreedy lost an arm in the war, but it didn't slow him down.
Two things that make the film stand out are the slow-burn manner in which tension builds to the final climax—similar to that of High Noon—and the fact that it's the only Western to deal with how Japanese-Americans were treated in the U.S. after the attack on Pearl Harbor. When Macreedy broaches the topic of Komoko to Smith, Smith tells him, referring to Japanese people, “They're all mad dogs. When I see a mad dog I don't wait for him to bite me.”
That sums up how the American government treated Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. It's odd that Hollywood, which has neglected this shameful chapter in American history, would choose a Western to examine it. Westerns, with a few exceptions like The Oxbow Incident, are hardly known for their social consciousness.
There appear to be around 10 residents of Black Rock, a dusty, malice-ridden hermit town gripped by paranoia. Emphasizing Macreedy's alien presence is that he wears a dark suit throughout the film. His real purpose in there is a mystery to both the townies and the audience until well into the film, which ramps up the mystery. He could be a private detective, a government agent, or a lone vigilante. When he does reveal his purpose, it doesn't matter to the town's mob boss, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan)—who cloaks his menace beneath a veneer of charm—and his enforcers, bully Coley Trimble (Ernest Borgnine), and Hector David (Lee Marvin), a drily threatening, thuggish presence. They just want him dead.
Macreedy’s potential allies are frozen in guilt or cowardice. The sheriff (Dean Jagger) is a compliant drunk who answers to Smith. Doc Velie (Walter Brennan, in a fine performance) holds back out of fear, and hotel keeper Pete Wirth (John Ericson) reluctantly obeys the town’s boss. Smith knows his dirty secret. Smith knows everyone in Black Rock’s dirty secret, including his own. He and the townspeople burned Komoko’s house down, and Smith shot the man dead as he fled the conflagration. The only one willing to do anything for Macreedy is Pete Worth’s sister Liz (Anne Francis), who rents him a jeep so he can drive out to Komoko’s farm, and catches a lot of heat for doing so.
Macreedy is all quiet persistence in his quest for truth and justice. His unthreatening demeanor gets mistaken for weakness. He fights at the end, but once in the middle of the story as well. Borgnine’s character, Trimble, is bullying him in a cafe as he's trying to eat, and Macreedy keeps backing up, giving in until Trimble lays a hand on him. The two square off and Macreedy shocks him with a judo chop to the throat, finishing him off with a flurry of other martial arts moves. His fighting style is symbolic of the connection he feels with Komoko and Komoko’s son, who died in battle while saving Macreedy’s life. That death, a sacrifice to America, puts another layer of shame on the cowards of Black Rock who’ve murdered Komoko out of racial hatred.
Macreedy brought the Distinguished Service Cross Komoko’s son won to Black Rock to give it to his father. On a more visceral level, this fight scene works well as a bully-gets-what’s-coming-to-him comeuppance, especially given Macreedy’s handicap.
Black Rock's a cinematic town surrounded by wide-open spaces. Another groundbreaking aspect of Bad Day at Black Rock was Sturges’ choice to use a new film technology, CinemaScope, which had a wide aspect ratio that was great for filming panoramic shots to be projected upon widescreens. Previously, Hollywood had used CinemaScope for widescreen spectacles—biblical epics, musicals, and travelogues. Films like this, with many interior scenes, were seen as better suited to other film technologies, but Sturges found a way to make CinemaScope work.
When Macreedy’s walking in the desert, the camera pulls way back from him, allowing the vast CinemaScope desert to make him look vulnerable and insignificant. When Macreedy’s inside, with townspeople surrounding him, the width of the screen reinforces how outnumbered he is. Because CinemaScope can hold multiple people in focus at once, the diner scene presents several men spread across the frame, forming a wall of hostility against Macreedy.
No discussion of Bad Day at Black Rock would be complete without mentioning the crucial role that Dore Schary, MGM’s production head at the time, played in a project adapted from an obscure short story by Howard Breslin. It wasn’t an obvious big-studio property. Schary, who had a reputation in Hollywood for supporting more socially-conscious, issue-driven stories, personally backed it at a time when MGM focused on glossy musicals and escapist entertainment. Schary also helped convince Spencer Tracy, who was skeptical at first, to do the film.
Bad Day at Black Rock is a groundbreaking film that expanded the definition of the Western, a genre that, at the time, was running out of tropes to recycle.