Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

A one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) arrives in a tiny, remote town asking about a farmer. The locals are none too keen to city slickers poking their noses where they don’t belong, but this Macreedy fellow doesn’t take hints.

The war had just ended and back at the beginning something bad happened at Black Rock. This film acts as an unconventional mystery. We understand the broad strokes but can’t be sure exactly what. Who knows, who was involved, and who can be trusted.

Set in 1945, war vet Macreedy is played by 54-going-on-100 Spencer Tracy, and this stretches credibility more than a little. The studio recruited Tracy hard who wasn’t initially interested. Making his character crippled seemed to have cinched the deal. The studio threw every talented character actor on the payrolls into this vanity project. Robert Ryan and Lee Marvin play principal antagonists, Anne Francis was adorable, Ernest Borgnine in an early role, Dean Jagger as a toothless sheriff, and Walter Brennan to argue politics with Tracy.

Bad Day at Black Rock isn’t actually a mystery but like any good film the details unfold over time. What specifically happened is less of a question than what Macgreedy’s backstory and motivation is, which isn’t explained until the final minutes. But this is an engaging story and an impulse watch. It came on right when I wanted to see something new (and not the dozen or so films I’ve already recorded), and I had never heard of it. Very progressive for it's time, I found it a pleasant surprise. AMRU 4.

“I believe a man is as big as what'll make him mad. Nobody around here seems big enough to get you mad.”