Detective Story (1951) - Random Review #1

Technical information:

• Director: William Wyler
• Starring: Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, William Bendix, Cathy O'Donnell
• Runtime: 103 min
• Color: Black and White

Short review (spoiler free):

Nothing really happens during the first half of the movie. But if you are patient enough, you will be in for a great experience. Hidden behind this boring recount of a day at a police department is a vivid tale of moral ambiguity, personal demon and what it means to be the servant of the law. A surprisingly thought-provoking movie.

Rating: Orange/Red

Review (heavy spoiler):

Aaah… Detective Story. One of the first films (if not the first film) that started my obsession with film-noir and dark, serious movies in general. I have a lot of fond memory with it. I clearly remember how it blew my young little mind with the never-seen-before atmosphere and subject matter. It may be rather lame compared to the stuff I watch these days, but the impact it had on me is undeniable. Without it, the other lovely stuff I have in my collection wouldn’t exist in the first place.

But wait… what? Detective Story? One could not come up with a more generic title for a movie. You have to type “1951” right after the title or else Google will think you are searching for a recommendation for a detective story to read! With a name like that, a movie sure faces a risk to sink into obscurity, as the name leaves no distinct impression to the potential viewer’s mind.

But if I remember correctly, it was because of the generic name that I decided to watch it! Perhaps my curious young self just wanted to see how bad it could be, with such a laughable name.

And my, that decision turned out to be one of the best choices I have made in my life!

The beginning:

The movie starts a busy police department. Nothing out of the ordinary here, just your typical dutiful police officers working hard to keep the city safe. Today, the honorable policemen have just captured a rather airheaded shoplifter, two daring robbers, and a stern-looking young man who just stole a large sum of money from his employer. Not to mention some people in distress occasionally coming, asking for the help of the kind and skillful police officers. Just another busy day at the 21st Precinct.

Then we are introduced to our main character, Detective Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas). At the first glance, Jim doesn’t look anything out of the ordinary. Jim also has a lovely wife whom the movie implies him to spend a lot of time caring for her despite his busy schedule. They have a lovely private talk before Jim goes to work, plan a night together, then Jim goes about his work.

Bored yet, my readers? Yes, because the first half of the movie is utterly boring. The entire movie is set inside a police department from start to end. And so far we are watching a bunch of police officers going about their work. We have some funny scenes with a “4 times loser” of a robber (Michael Strong) screaming and kicking around; detectives interrogating criminals here and there… We are just watching police people at work at their most boring.

But if you are patient enough…

The drama begins:

 

The movie slowly, in the most natural way possible, reveal the deeper layer of its key characters. Jim turns out to be a rather hot-tempered man, and also a bit too rigid in his attitude toward justice. Aren’t all policemen firm on their ground of justice? But slowly, we realize that there is something a bit… odd in Jim. His friend Lou (William Bendix) also displays a similar attitude toward the shoplifter, and initially with the stern young thief, whose name now revealed to be Arthur (Craig Hill), but he starts to soften up when he learns more about the young man’s past and what drove him to steal (he stole in order to afford for a night out with a girl from his past). But Jim, he remains a fireball toward anyone he calls a criminal. So much that even Lt. Monaghan, his boss (Horace McMahon), has to tell him to calm down even while he acknowledges Jim’s efficiency.

You may ask, why is it unusual for a police detective to be hard to criminals? Wait until Karl Schneider (George Macready) enters the scene.

 

Karl is a quack and a suspect Jim has taken too much interest for a long time. His latest lawyer is pissed off that Jim has been giving Karl “a hard time” and is ready to blow things up if Jim “touch a hair” of his client again. Now this is when Jim’s temper starts to lead him to hot water. Fearful for the department’s reputation, Lt. Monaghan warns Jim not to resort to violence like he always does. Of course, this goes into Jim’s ear and out the other ear. Jim can only tolerate Karl for so long, especially when his two witnesses fail him; one turns out to be a phony, and one turns up dead in the hospital before he can excort Karl to her hospital. Jim beats Karl up so bad that Karl has to be sent to a hospital. Things inside the department are not any better, when Jim continues to harass Arthur and refuses to release him even after his employer pleads for him.

Now this is when Lt. Monaghan, and maybe the viewers, start to suspect Jim’s motive. Is he really representing the law at all? Or is Jim trying to square out something personal with all the criminals on-screen, especially Karl and Arthur? Suddenly, Jim becomes less of a honorable man. There has to be some unseen force driving the man, because at this point Jim’s ruthlessness has become somewhat inhuman.

A shattered ideal:

The first thing Lt. Monaghan guesses, is that Jim is squaring out an affair between Karl and Jim’s wife, Mary (Eleanor Parker). Mary is summoned to the department to have a private talk with the lieutenant. After some rather lengthy interrogation that seems to go nowhere, Lt. Monaghan has to summon Jim, while his wife and a strange man is still inside. And it turns out, Lt. Monaghan’s hunch is… incorrect. Jim knows nothing about Mary’s affair with Karl, and there is absolutely nothing personal between Jim and Karl.

Well, Jim is still an honorable man. But does it make him feel any better?

So turns out, before Mary met Jim, she was in a relationship with the strange man mentioned earlier and got pregnant. Mary enlisted the help of Karl for the delivery of the baby. Karl, being a quack, messed things up and left Mary with a dead baby and the inability to carry any more children.

You can see that this won’t sit well with Jim, a ruthlessly rigid man. Turns out, Jim is interacting with a criminal all along (or so he thinks)! A tram of a woman, going for Karl Schneider, everything Jim hates! He refuses to listen to any of Mary’s explanation. Yeah, what's left to understand?

Or is there?

This discovery leaves Jim’s world shaking to its core. Jim was so used to living on a black-and-white autopilot that he is in no way ready to deal with this shade of grey. Everything was so easy for him. Forgiving his wife, he would have to look past her “crime”. Chart her up as another criminal, he would have accept that he lose a part of his life. What to choose, Jim? There is no “shade of grey” in his world. Both choices are equally devastating to him.

But why does he hate “criminals” so much, you ask? Well, apart from the obvious fact that he is hopelessly rigid in his judgment, the movie also suggests a couple of times that Jim has a shitty childhood with a shitty dad and a hopelessly soft mom who ends up losing her sanity in his dad’s hand. And he vowed that he will never become the same man as his dad. He has adopted this cynical view, from his interaction with dad, that all criminals are bad and there is no chance of their redemption. The movie is clever enough to insert the “4-time-loser” character, not just for comedic effect, but also to strengthen Jim’s belief of a black-and-white world and attempt to get the viewers to Jim’s side too, along with the cold-hearted Karl. And for a while the movie really leads us to believe that Jim is right, until when it turns everything upside down, for Jim and for us viewers.

A chance for redemption:

In the evening, Mary comes back to the department again, to say goodbye to Jim forever. Maybe subconsciously, she is hoping for Jim to turns round and come back to her, even if that is a pipe dream. Still torn between the choices presented to him, the tearful Jim tries to reconcile with Mary, in an attempt to make compromise with the two sides inside him that are screaming for his attention. And for a moment looks like he has succeeded, he gets his wife back and clears up all misunderstanding.

Something subtle, but highly disturbing, crops up during this seemingly bittersweet conversation. Jim talks about how he will try to put everything behind, to which Mary replies “the rest of our lives we'll be living with this”. Clearly, Jim isn’t successful in finding the middle ground for his choices, and the only way he can deal with them is to try to forget them, meaning denying them, putting them in a dark corner of his mind and living in constant fear of them coming out again. Denial has never been proven to be an effective solution to problem, and it is way different from “acceptance”, as suggested by Mary to “live with it”, though the two are frequently confused with each other. Deep down, Jim is in no way ready to accept Mary’s past behavior; he just tries to “put it behind”. He will not be able to keep his cool with Mary for long.
 

And it shows, when he once again accuses Mary of being a tramp when it is revealed to him that Mary went to New York instead of going home with her parents.

The heartbroken Mary now has no more reason to come back to Jim. It is now clear to her that Jim is a cold, unforgiving devil of a husband. She would save her sanity if she leaves him now, because clearly she deserves a better man. Jim’s last chance to get his wife back, gone, as fast as if comes.

Jim laments that he has spent his life trying to stay as far away from his dad as possible, only to find out he has been laughing inside him all along. Yeah, his dad has been laughing inside him all along, so loud that Jim spends all of his life running away like a madman so that he no longer has to hear the maniac laugh. And running like a madman he is, so fast that he steps on countless number of people, the very people he calls “criminals”, and ironically repeats the cycle of abuse his dad left behind. For years, everything he does has become unconscious behavior. He has put himself in an autopilot, running with it without question, until this very day of revelation that forces him to look back at the trail of destruction he leaves behind.

So, maybe Lt. Monaghan is right, Jim does have a personal motive toward his criminals after all. Maybe he is using the criminals to validate himself that he still the “good guy”. Or is he just trying to uphold the law but at the same time fails to deal with his personal baggage and it just all happens to find its way into his professional life? This is very much the question the movie put forward to us. Ultimately, is Jim really the angel? A wounded angel? Or a devil in angel’s disguise trying too hard to prove to the world that he is no devil?

The final enlightenment:

Toward the end of the movie, the 4-time-loser goes mad and threatens to kill the entire department with a gun he just robbed from an officer. Jim, with no more reason to live, risks his life trying to get the gun back and is fatally shot. During the last minutes of his life, Jim seems to finally find out the solution for his choices, and it is… there is no solution. He has to accept, not forget, that life is not black and white, and there is no way around it. So he calls for Lou, tells him to tear up his profile on Arthur, and agrees to let Arthur run free, effectively betting on his odd of redemption.

There is this small detail that catches me at the ending of the movie. Mere moment before dying, Jim reads his last rite, which is later continued by Lou. The last rite goes like this:

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost […] I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven, and the pains of Hell. But most all, for having offended Thee, my Lord, who art all good and deserving of my love. But I firmly resolve with the help of Thy Grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life.

This last rite poses several questions. From start to finish, Jim is just doing his job as a good police officer, punishing criminals to the bitter end. And it is proven that all of his work is not for any selfish gain. He is a pure soul in the definition of the Lord. So why is he so sorry to God? Why is he apologizing as if he is one big sinner? What does he mean by “offended”?

It seems like the ultimate justice machine of Heaven is finally feeling the receiving end of the High Judge and Jury. And he is apologizing because he fear Heaven’s punishment. Ironically enough, on the journey to eliminate criminals, Jim also managed to leave a trait of destruction; he stops countless people from getting their chance to redemption, most notably Mary and possibly Arthur if he didn’t stop. If he was God himself, Jim would have sent so many people down to Hell without a second thought. And now, he is finally feeling what it’s like to be a sinner in complete mercy of a higher power, and how it feels to beg for a single bit of forgiveness. He is effectively tasting his own medicine. But as in true film-noir fashion, people only learn their ultimate life lesson when it’s too late. This does make you wonder, how does it feel to be finally enlightened during the last minute of your life? What thought goes around your mind during this short moment? Do you feel an enless sense of regret, or joy?

Final thought:

It’s easy to see why this movie had such a big impact on my young self. At that time, I had never before been presented with such a complicated concept of accepting the shade of grey of life. If you asked my younger self about the movie, the answer you would get would be less detailed than it is now. I would have only been able to understand that the movie is trying to say that I should be less strict with other people, and that a bad childhood leads to bad adulthood. But as I grew up, I started to see the movie in more depth (just like what the movie wants me to do with other people)
 

Yes, there are some cliche the movie throws into, like a hot-headed cop wanting to do things his way, and a wounded hero with a dark past. But I really appreciate that the movie spins the cliché in a very creative way. Yes, Jim has a shitty childhood, but the movie doesn’t at all attempt to use that as an excuse for his shitty behavior. Instead, we get a cold presentation of a morally ambiguous man who thinks he knows better than the rest of the world, but has to admit otherwise at the very end. Whether Jim is subconsciously carrying out the cycle of abuse he learns from his dad in an equally subconsciously, or he is trying his best to outlive his legacy, we will never know. And maybe, that’s another shade of grey the movie throws to us.

But unlike other film-noir, I find this movie pleasantly optimistic. After Jim dies, Lou unchains Arthur and makes him promise never to commit any crime again. The film ends with Arthur and his lover calmly walking away. There is a strange sense of hopefulness watching the two walking in the street. Maybe, just maybe, Arthur will not be another 4-time-loser, and will live a happy new life with his lover as a civilized man. The fact that Jim finally agrees to bet on Arthur’s odd of being the good guy also gives the viewers the same hope. Maybe, a little bit of forgiveness will change a person’s life, drastically.

To this day, I’m still completely in awe with how much this movie manage to accomplish, only with the setting of a police department. There is just so much you can get from it in 103 minutes. The only thing I would complain about is the rather generic title that does the content no justice (seriously, would it be better if the movie was called “The Fallen Judge” or things like that?) Although my younger self couldn’t comprehence the movie completely, it opened a new world to me, a world of movies that bring real substance to the soul instead of just flashy light and explosion that you forget when you step out of the cinema.