The Well

Okay, we all know how poisonous rumor can be. Just repeating something doesn't make it so. Mix in a common human liking for embellishment, along with a readiness to believe the worst about certain groups of people, and you get tinder for explosive situations. This movie makes the most of such ordinary human tendencies. The first half amounts to a textbook example of how such tensions can break apart an any-town community. More importantly, the filmmakers do it in expert fashion. First, a little black girl goes missing. Then rumor feeds on old racial grudges, fractures erupt into violence, and race war looms beyond what local authorities can handle. Note how the scenes build on one another, spreading to ever more people like a virus. This first half is about as intense and well edited as any film of the period.

The second half shows the community coming back together after the split. Happily, the races unite around a common concern to rescue the little girl from the well. This part's uplifting, especially when the movie shows individual skills combining across racial lines into an effective community action. But it also goes on too long, even after we've gotten the point. There's suspense here, but not enough to carry 45 minutes of drilling machinery. Nonetheless, the two halves do combine into a pretty powerful cautionary tale.

I like the way the filmmakers mix average looking actors (Osterloh, Engle) with the ordinary townfolk. That, along with location backgrounds creates the needed any-town atmosphere. Too bad IMDb is unable to identify these filming locations— they deserve credit. On the whole, it's a really well acted drama, Harry Morgan's hapless Claude Packard being a special standout. Note how deftly he moves from anger to sorrow in the confrontational office scene with his uncle (Kelley). Rober's excellent too, as the standup sheriff. Someone, however, should have told the comedic Ed Max (the milkman) that this was not a comedy.

There is one interesting angle to ponder. Suppose that initial scene of the girl falling into the well were eliminated. Then we wouldn't have the advantage of being able to judge the actions of the various individuals. For the movie's purposes, I think this first scene is required so that we can see how misguided the town's reactions are. Nonetheless, I think it's interesting to consider how our perceptions might alter were we unsure of the girl's fate at the outset.

It's also worth noting that the folks here-- producer Popkin, director Rouse, and writer Greene—are also the folks responsible for that powerful noir classic DOA (1950). Add that gem to this one and we get a very talented team of independent filmmakers. Too bad they came together at the tail end of the B-movie era. Also, their brand of social-conscience filmmaking was about to freeze up in the face of the McCarthy-ite chill of the early 50's. Nonetheless, the lessons of this movie remain as valid and telling as they were 60 years ago, plus making for darn riveting film entertainment.

This is a normal small American town, for years the mixed race inhabitants have lived in total harmony as one community. But when little black girl Carolyn Crawford falls down a well, she's feared to have been kidnapped, and this after having last being seen with a white man in town. This town becomes something completely different....

The Well, a B budgeted movie with a cast consisting largely of unknowns. Dually directed by two equally unheralded men. Boasting a DVD cover that has nothing to do with the theme of the film, and shunted out of conscious by the release the same year of Billy Wilder's bigger produced, "person in underground peril," Ace In The Hole.

It's a crime in itself that this B movie gem has had the odds stacked against it getting wider and more productive exposure. For thematically, which is three fold, it's a film that desperately deserves more people to take it on and appraise it in the modern age. Released in 1951, before racial tensions were to explode into American history, The Well is a brave offering from co-writer's Russell Rouse {also co-director} and Clarence Greene. Not content to just offer up a one dimensional rescue piece concerning mixed races, they take the ugly racial aggression here and sit it next to the ugliness of human wild fire ignorance. From a dubiously casted assumption, this town implodes, and it's an ugliness that paints the human race in a dim and unflattering light. Even the police, on who this town depends on, are pulled along by the tide of insanity. Five burly officers interrogating one bemused and frightened suspect, they have their man regardless of facts. Something that over the course of history we know has reared its ugly head. It very much reminded me of a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode called "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street". Anyone familiar with that particular piece will have some idea of what drives The Well forward.

Possibly part inspired by the sad and tragic case of little Kathy Fiscus, who in 1949 fell down a San Marino well, Rouse's picture shifts to an equally, and engrossing gear for its final third. After having been caught up in the town coming apart, we, as well as the town, suddenly get a jolt back to earth. There is after all a little girl missing here. Now we get the inevitable tonal shift that most viewers would have expected, but it's no less dramatic for it. And it's now when the film well and truly makes its point, a point of reference that should be heeded as long as we all shall live.

Having a cast of relative no names, tho Barry Kelley as Sam Packard and Harry Morgan as Claude Packard will be names to some {ie:me!} really gives the film a grounded in reality feel. It's not hard to accept these people as small town residents, and thus the film is far better for it. The story is further aided by the score from Dimitri Tiomkin, at times funereal, at others a booming bombastic character itself. Sadly the print of the film is desperately in need of a remaster, which as it's unlikely to get one, means that the cinematography work of Ernest Laszlo struggles to come thru. But don't let the print put you off, if you get the chance to see this film then don't pass up the chance, for you may find yourself better off for the experience. 9/10

As a boy growing up in the 1950's South being surrounded by racial and religious prejudices (My father made Archie Bunker seem like a bleeding-heart liberal.) I remember being impressed and educated by seeing two great little films. The Well was one and Storm Warning was the other. Both were made in 1951. I guess you could say that Storm Warning was an A-movie as it featured Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, and Doris Day as the stars.

The Well was definitely a B-movie, but its subject matter gave it a step-up on most of the B-movies of the time. Keep in mind that this was a period in time in which people went to double features and the local movie house and drive-ins as television was just an infant and not available except to a few. B-movies were generally low-budget films cranked out for more or less mindless entertainment.

The plot is pretty standard. A little Black girl is on her way to school and wanders into a field to pick some flowers where she falls into an abandoned well. The search for the little girl is begun. A man in town to visit his uncle - a rich and powerful businessman - who was seen talking to the girl comes under suspicion. As he is "grilled" by the police, the uncle storms into the station and demands his release to no avail. As the uncle is leaving the station, he is questioned by the little girl's father who has heard of the nephew. There is a scuffle, and the uncle falls and is injured. As news of the incident is spread and embellished with false rumors, all hell breaks loose. Just as the town is on the verge of an all-out racial riot, a boy rushes in to announce that he has discovered the little girl's things next to the well. From that point on, all the town's energies are concentrated upon saving the little girl. The uncle provides heavy equipment from his business, and the nephew - who just happens to be a mining expert - is convinced to save the day.

All of this is carried out in over-the-top B-movie melodramatic fashion supported by just about every '50's cliché character including the strong lawman leader; his sensible love interest; the businessman who runs the town; the pleading, helpless mother; the racially biased beat cop; and young people of both races who run rampant destroying property and beating on each other.

So why the eight stars? The time. The content. The message. Since the beginning of film, movie makers have strived to bring education to their audiences through entertainment. This film surely deserves recognition for demonstrating the evils of racial prejudice and rumor in an effective and entertaining fashion.

A perennial late-night TV favorite during the 60s and 70s, THE WELL is a tense, sharply directed B programmer which denotes the gradual escalation of a racial conflict within a rural U. S. community, ignited by the suspicious disappearance of a little black girl. In truth, she had fallen into a deep forgotten well, trapped yet alive. During the ensuing police investigation, a misinformative detail leaked to the public leads to a series of progressively violent cross-racial confrontations which intensify until the missing child's true perile is learned. The film's concluding moments focus on her rescue mission, an enormous undertaking which draws the entire town to spectate. These scenes crackle with edge-of-your-seat tension, and are surprisingly well realized for such a modest production. Presumably, the key inspiration for this project was the heartbreaking Kathy Fiscus tragedy which occurred two years earlier, becoming a watershed moment in television broadcasting.

Though the grubbiness of underfunding is occasionally evident, this is a first-rate example of second-string cinema which bravely touches on sensitive sociopolitical issues nearly always skirted by Hollywood at the time. It's a great opportunity to see some of Hollywood's black performers of the period getting a chance to shine in dramatic parts beyond the one-dimensional maids, footmen, and dubious comic relief characters to which they were then so commonly relegated. THE WELL is often cited as a "film noir", though I'd personally disagree...stylistically, there are a few minor distinctions to that end, but the basal elements would render it an anomalous addition to the noir canon.

6.5/10.

I saw this film a few times as a kid back in the 60s or 70s. I remember it as pretty good for its time. I also remember Harry Morgan from "Dragnet" as being the only cast member I recognized then or now. I was mostly caught up in watching how supposedly reasonable people in the grip of panic, impatience, and uncertainty make assumptions, point fingers, cast blame, and jump to conclusions. Misunderstandings pile up on top of each like a 10-car highway accident and push the town closer and closer to a dreaded race riot while the actual victim's plight seems all but forgotten.

For its time, I'm sure this movie was a bold move. It's a shame it hasn't been broadcast again recently. It's definitely worth a look.