La porte s'ouvre

Sidney Poitier made his screen debut in No Way Out about a young black doctor accused of 'murder' by Richard Widmark. Seeing the two of them you would hardly believe that they in fact became lifelong friends in real life.

The Biddle Brothers, a pair of white trash rednecks, from a neighborhood called Beaver Canal in a large American city, get brought into an emergency room with gunshot wounds. They tried to stick up a gas station and got caught. Sidney Poitier is a young intern on duty and he suspects something more wrong with the younger Biddle's condition. While doing a spinal tap his patient dies and the rabidly racist Widmark playing the older Biddle, accuses Poitier of murder.

No matter how off the wall his charges are, some people listen and some have to investigate. In Poitier's corner is his supervisor Stephen McNally. But Widmark manages to spread his poison and it results in a race riot.

Widmark is something else. Down to this day it's so easy for some to believe they're in a bad situation because someone else or some group else is somehow given preferential treatment. Widmark believes this and he lives in an area where it's taken as gospel. We've rarely seen a portrayal of hate as vivid as this on screen.

Hate whether it's individually or group directed can sometime take on a life of its own. Even when he's confronted with the truth about the ludicrousness of his charges, Widmark still won't let go. It's what's most frightening in No Way Out.

Linda Darnell is excellent also as the former wife of Widmark's brother. She buys into Widmark's hate at first, but she shows a capacity to learn. It can be found in most of us or there would be no hope for the human race.

Joseph Mankiewicz directed and wrote No Way Out. He was at the height of his career winning two best Director Oscars back to back for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve. He probably didn't win anything for No Way Out because the Academy voters didn't want to give him everything at that time. He was nominated for Best Screenplay.

Sixty Six years later No Way Out is still a powerful portrayal of racism and its ugly effects on the soul.

I didn't think it was possible for me to be shocked by a film about racism released in 1950, but I was wrong.

In "No Way Out," Richard Widmark plays an absolutely vile racist who spews the most hateful language I've heard in a narrative film in a long time. I found myself actually wincing every time he used some sort of racial epithet, which is frequently. His target is Sidney Poitier, the doctor who he thinks killed his brother while pretending to try to save his life. This specific story of racism plays out against the backdrop of a larger story of racist violence that occurs between a black neighborhood and the white trash enclave that has sworn vengeance against it.

This is a harsh, angry, bitter pill of a movie, and deserves to be rediscovered in our current climate of renewed racial outrage. I'd like to think Widmark's character is a bit of a caricature, but after hearing and seeing some of the people living in our country today, it would seem not. Poitier plays his role the way he played every role he was ever in, while Linda Darnell, as Widmark's former sister-in-law, creates the film's most fascinating character, a woman whose actual experience with black people doesn't jive with what she's been taught to think about them.

What I liked most about "No Way Out" was the way it refuses to condescend to black people and portray them all as too good to be true noble sufferers, the way other movies from the time period do. The scenes set in Poitier's household portray them as just normal people, painfully aware at all times of the burden of being black in America, but otherwise just wanting to go about their lives. The character of a black maid who works for a white doctor was one of my favorites in the movie. She has a warm employee/employer relationship with the doctor, and he even treats her at times like one of the family, but a word or glance she throws out here and there make clear that she never forgets the difference between them, even if he thinks he does.

"No Way Out" brought Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Lesser Samuels an Oscar nomination for Best Story and Screenplay in the same year that Mankiewicz won the awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay for "All About Eve." Good year for him.

Grade: A

As in other 1950s films, Richard Widmark is very scary and Sidney Poitier very noble herein. There is little preaching in Mankiewicz's screenplay and it has splendidly filmed action sequences. The rap that Mankiewicz's films are "all talk and no action" is untenable (see, especially, "The Quiet Man" and "Five Fingers"), though the talk he wrote was often very incisive and very witty.

Notable for the debuts of Poitier, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, this melodrama is of more than historical interest. It is a gripping, noirish tale of a nightmare experienced by a young black doctor. Although the ending is predictable, and Linda Darnell's character chances unconvincingly often and unconvincingly far (and her clothes are inconceivable for a drive-in car hop!), "No Way Out" is more than a historical curiosity. (And Mankiewicz deserves reconsideration as one of the directors who really was the author of the films he directed, up there with Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges.)

This movie, even today, stands out as one of the best, and most honest of Hollywood films dealing racism and prejudice. Good friends Poitier and Widmark are anything but as they play, respectively, a hospital intern and a racist hoodlum. The scenes between them are can be hard to watch because of the raw, uncensored for the time slurs spouted by Widmark at Poitier. Widmark is not redeemed at the end, nor is the subject of racism mollycoddled. It is a tribute to this film that its' existence bear witness to the fact that Hollywood has long been capable of portraying some of life's most unpleasant realities. This film is a bright spot on the resumes of all involved, particularly Poitier, who plays someone who is human more than noble, and Widmark, who puts a realistic face on raw, naked bigotry.

A very effective and engrossing racial drama, with standout performances by Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark. Widmark, in particular, tears up the screen with his harrowing portrayal of a pathologically obsessed racist; he is almost frightening to watch. The script keeps the action moving along briskly, in edge-of-the seat mode. Still effective, for a film half-a-century old.