Cornered (1945)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Film Review

One year on from Murder, My Sweet (1944), director Edward Dmytryk and actor Dick Powell were reunited and together they concocted another, equally dark and claustrophobic film noir thriller, this time one which powerfully evokes the mood of paranoia and unease which existed in the immediate aftermath of WWII.  Fascism may have been comprehensively defeated in Europe but there was widespread fear that many of its leading proponents were still alive and kicking, biding their time and preparing for another assault on western democratic values.  With its labyrinthine plot, populated by shady underworld figures, and an unsettling aura of sustained menace, Cornered prefigures the anti-Communist mania that would flare up in America shortly after it was made, a collective hysteria that would tarnish and destroy many reputations, including that of Edward Dmytryk and his producer Adrian Scott.

Cornered is one of Dmytryk's bleakest films, even gloomier than his subsequent noir-tinted study in persecution, Crossfire (1947).  From the outset, the main protagonist, played by a suitably rough and dour Dick Powell, looks like a man without a future, a man so consumed by his personal vendetta that he becomes little more than a walking weapon.  The world he enters is just as soulless, a world inhabited only by double dealing rogues, deceptive femme fatales, and ruthless anti-fascist operatives.  In this maelstrom of intrigue, the moral boundaries are practically non-existent, and so it is no wonder that the hero finds it impossible to distinguish the good guys from the bad.  Who is to say what is right and what is wrong when black and white are so chaotically intertwined?  In this murky shadowland where no one can be trusted and yet everyone seems so sure of himself, moral conviction is a matter of instinct, not intellectual rigour.

Powell's character is a pure automaton.  He is not driven by logic, compassion or ideology but by a basic animal desire to hunt and destroy the one who has ruined his life.  It is his single-mindedness that proves to be his greatest enemy; it not only prevents him from forming an effective alliance with those who might help him achieve his ends, it also makes him an easy target for his opponents.   Cornered is perhaps too convoluted and caricatured to have the impact it deserves, but it is a beautifully cogent study in obsession, providing a salutary warning of the dangers of allowing primitive instincts and delusion to override reason - a lesson which America (taking its lead from Senator Joseph McCarthy) would have to learn the hard way in the decade that followed.

Film Synopsis

Immediately after WWII, Laurence Gerard, a former Canadian fighter pilot, returns to France, eager to be reunited with the woman he married during his brief stay there in the war.  Gerard is horrified to discover that his wife has been executed for her involvment with the French resistance, betrayed by a Nazi collaborator named Marcel Jarnac.  Gerard has only one throught: to track Jarnac down and exact a swift revenge.  But Jarnac has covered his tracks well, even faking his own death.  Gerard trails Jarnac's supposed widow to Buenos Aires, but she is unwilling to help him.  As he continues his investigation, Gerard runs into some suspicious looking characters who are too eager to lend their support.   It appears he is not the only one who wants to bring Jarnac to account, but not everyone is as reliable as he seems...