Black Tuesday (1954) – Film Review

Director: Hugo Fregonese
Cast: Edward G. Roinson, Peter Graves, Jean Parker
Certificate: 12

By Sarah Morgan

A long-forgotten director, a star in decline and a tighter than tight budget. Black Tuesday features all three, and they came together to help form one of the most gripping crime dramas of the 1950s.

As it celebrates its 70th birthday, the movie – which is also often dubbed a film noir, thanks in no small part to Stanley Cortez’s extraordinary cinematography – is receiving a well-deserved Blu-ray release.

“Depth and intelligence”

Edward G Robinson’s star may have been fading by the time he appeared in the film, but he’s utterly compelling and terrifying as Vincent Canelli, a notorious mobster whose girlfriend Hatti and his honchos mastermind a jailbreak on the night he should be going to the electric chair.

They take with them a bunch of other Death Row inmates, but while most are set free to act as a decoy for Canelli and his gang, one remains with them – Peter Manning, who has hidden $200k from a robbery, and only he knows where to find it. Canelli wants the cash to fund a new life abroad and will stop at nothing to get it. He treats Manning as a friend, until all involved are pinned down by the cops in a rundown warehouse, where his true colours begin to emerge.

Peter Graves who, a year later, would play another con with hidden loot in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (which was also, incidentally, shot by Cortez) plays Manning, giving him a depth and intelligence we’re perhaps not used to seeing in such characters.

“Every last drop of tension”

Also among the supporting cast is Jean Parker, who tackles the role of Hatti. She’s not just a gangster’s moll hanging around to make Canelli look good; she’s super-smart and resilient, and his feelings for her also make him seem more human, rather than simply a two-dimensional villain on the make.

Hugo Fregonese is the now-forgotten auteur behind the movie. Argentina-born, he was once highly regarded, but has since fallen from favour; perhaps this Blu-ray will help him receive the recognition his obvious talents deserve. Black Tuesday is a taut tale written by Sidney Boehm, but it’s Fregonese who wrings every last drop of tension out of it.

The disc also features a number of fascinating extras, including a profile of Fregonese by film historian Sheldon Hall and a video essay by Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City. All of them add more to the viewers’ understanding of Black Tuesday, a movie that truly deserves to be rediscovered.