Plot
California fruit picker Paul Rodriguez hopes to someday have a farm of his own. When his friend Lopo Chavez has a car accident, he is insulted with a racial slur by Joe Ferguson, a passenger in the other car. Joe's father disapproves of this bigotry.
Lopo visits his friend Sunny Garcia, whose family publishes a Spanish-language paper called La Luz. At a dance, Sunny is introduced to Larry Wilder, editor of "The Union", who once was a big-city newspaper reporter. A racially heated fight breaks out at the dance. Paul accidentally strikes Peters, a policeman. Joe is also arrested. A reporter who works for Larry depicts the incident to a Stockton paper as a full-scale race riot. Reporter Jan Dawson arrives to pursue the story.
Peters roughs up Paul in the back seat of the police car. His partner tries to intervene but crashes the car and dies. Paul flees. A dragnet for him begins. It intensifies when a teenage farm girl, Mildred, startled at seeing Paul, falls and is knocked unconscious, after which she blames Paul for what happened.
Larry tries to defend Paul in a newspaper article, inciting more anger. Lopo is attacked and a lynch mob for Paul is organized. The newspaper office is destroyed. Larry considers leaving town for good, but he is in love with Sunny, so they decide to merge their newspapers and continue to fight for what is right.
Production
The film was based on the novel The Voice of Stephen Wilder by Daniel Mainwaring. Film rights were purchased by Pine-Thomas Productions in August 1949. [6] Mainwaring was friends with Pine Thomas and he persuaded the producers to hire Losey. Losey later said:
It was a subject I felt very passionately about but I had big trouble because Pine and Thomas were a combination that made ‘B’ pictures for Paramount, and they were monsters, absolute monsters. And they interfered in the worst possible way at all points and I would never have been able to make that picture in a million years if I hadn’t had the guts and if Dan Mainwaring hadn’t had the guts that he had. He really risked his career to protect me. [7]
Losey studied the film Fury as well as footage from the 1949 Peekskill riots. [8]
The film was known at one stage as Outrage. Gail Russell had been on suspension by Paramount but got off it to make this film. [9]
The film was an attempt by Pine-Thomas Productions to make a more "significant" kind of film. Shooting began in October and took 18 days. [10]
Losey found it difficult working with Russell who could not remember her lines. She was alcoholic and Paramount said she could not drink but Losey had to give her alcohol so she could recall her lines. The director loved working with cameraman Roy Hunt. [11]
Losey said the producer forced a music score on the film which "made it cheaper and more melodramatic and it slowed its tempo" and he was fired off the movie. [12]
Losey said "Mainwaring’s script was a very good one but it was corrupted by the producers. I mean all that business of the rape of the girl and the police car going up in flames were stuck in by them, and | didn’t like shooting them and the picture would have been much better without them. But it was quite a successful picture in spite of everything, and it does say what I wanted to say." [13]
Critical response
Film critic Bosley Crowther praised the film. He wrote, "Within the inevitable limits of the low-budget action film, which happens to be the type of product that these modest gentlemen produce, they have made an exciting picture on a good, solid, social theme—the cruelty of a community when inflamed by prejudice. And although their drama, The Lawless, is no Fury or Intruder in the Dust , it is a startling account of mob violence in a northern California town. With merited optimism, it was presented at the Astor yesterday." [14]
The staff at Variety magazine also gave the film a positive review. They wrote, "Racial tolerance gets a working over in The Lawless, but the producers don’t soapbox the message, using it, instead, as a peg on which to produce a hard-hitting drama, equipped with action and fast pace ... Performances all stack up as topnotch, with several being standout." [15]
According to film historian Foster Hirsch, The Lawless garnered “generally good reviews” in America, but was “greeted with wild enthusiasm” in France. Reviewers at Cahiers du Cinéma offered fulsome praise: Marc Bernard wrote “It is the most beautiful of films…I breathe easier after each viewing.” Pierre Rissient declared The Lawless “the greatest western and even the only western ever made.” [16] [17]
Box office
Pine Thomas said they expected to make a profit of $1 million on the film. [1]
However The Lawless was a box office disappointment and not as profitable as other Pine-Thomas films. Pine felt it might have been more successful if it had a bigger star or if released a year earlier, when he said much of the public “was actually going to see message films.” He and Thomas insisted they were glad they made the film because it was the first time they produced “a real critics’ picture” and it "proved we're guys whose only interest isn't making money." [18]
Joseph Walton Losey III was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
Gail Russell was an American film and television actress.
Accident is a 1967 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Written by Harold Pinter, it is an adaptation of the 1965 novel Accident by Nicholas Mosley. It is the second of three Losey–Pinter collaborations; the others being The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971). At the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, Accident won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury award. It also won the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
Edward Macdonald Carey was an American actor, best known for his role as the patriarch Dr. Tom Horton on NBC's soap opera Days of Our Lives. For almost three decades, he was the show's central cast member.
The Servant is a 1963 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It was written by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella of the same name. The film stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox.
M is a 1951 American film noir directed by Joseph Losey. It is a remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 German film of the same title about a child murderer. This version shifts the location of action from Berlin to Los Angeles and changes the killer's name from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Both versions of M were produced by Seymour Nebenzal, whose son, Harold, was associate producer of the 1951 version.
Secret Ceremony is a 1968 British drama-thriller film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and Robert Mitchum.
Modesty Blaise is a 1966 British spy-fi comedy film directed by Joseph Losey, produced by Joseph Janni, and loosely based on the popular comic strip Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell, who co-wrote the original story upon which Evan Jones and Harold Pinter based their screenplay. It stars Monica Vitti as "Modesty", opposite Terence Stamp as Willie Garvin and Dirk Bogarde as her nemesis Gabriel. The cast also includes Harry Andrews, Michael Craig, Alexander Knox, Rossella Falk, Clive Revill, and Tina Aumont. The film's music was composed by Johnny Dankworth and the theme song, Modesty, sung by pop duo David and Jonathan. It was Vitti's first English-speaking role.
Boom! is a 1968 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Noël Coward. It was adapted by Tennessee Williams from his own play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.
The Go-Between is a 1971 British historical drama film directed by Joseph Losey. Its screenplay by Harold Pinter is an adaptation of the 1953 novel The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley. The film stars Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Margaret Leighton, Michael Redgrave and Dominic Guard.
The Criminal is a 1960 British neo-noir crime film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Jill Bennett, and Margit Saad. Baker plays Johnny Bannion, a recently-paroled gangster who is sent back to prison after robbing a racetrack, with both the authorities and the criminal underworld looking for the money.
A Doll's House is a 1973 drama film directed by Joseph Losey, based on the 1879 play A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. It stars Jane Fonda in the role of Nora Helmer and David Warner as her domineering husband, Torvald.
Pine-Thomas Productions was a prolific B-picture unit of Paramount Pictures from 1940–1957, producing 81 films. Co-producers William H. Pine and William C. Thomas were known as the "Dollar Bills" because none of their economically made films ever lost money. "We don't want to make million dollar pictures," they said. "We just want to make a million dollars."
King and Country is a 1964 British war film directed by Joseph Losey, shot in black and white, and starring Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted for the screen by British screenwriter Evan Jones based on the play Hamp by John Wilson and a 1955 novel by James Lansdale Hodson.
The Sleeping Tiger is a 1954 British film noir directed by Joseph Losey and starring Alexis Smith, Dirk Bogarde and Alexander Knox. It was Losey's first British feature, which he directed under the pseudonym of Victor Hanbury due to being blacklisted in the McCarthy Era. It was shot at Walton Studios and on location in London. The film's sets were designed by the art director John Stoll. It was released by Anglo-Amalgamated while in America it was distributed by Astor Pictures.
Blind Date is a 1959 British murder mystery film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Hardy Krüger, Stanley Baker, and Micheline Presle. It was written by Ben Barzman and Millard Lampell based on the 1955 novel Blind Date by Leigh Howard.
Robert Hakim and Raymond Hakim were Egyptian-born brothers who usually worked in collaboration as film producers in France and other European countries. Their brother André Hakim was also a film producer.
The Gypsy and the Gentleman is a 1958 British costume drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It stars Melina Mercouri and Keith Michell.
No Hands on the Clock is a 1941 American comedy mystery film directed by Frank McDonald starring Chester Morris as detective Humphrey Campbell. The cast also included Jean Parker and Rose Hobart. It was produced by Pine-Thomas Productions and released by Paramount Pictures.
El Paso is a 1949 American Western film directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring John Payne, Gail Russell and Sterling Hayden.
