Le puits

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 little black girl falls down a well. Police search for her to no avail. Soon it is discovered she was seen with an older white man that same day. All of this leads up to the man being arrested and racial tensions rising and eventually spinning out of control. Entirely believable for the time and era.

This terrific films studies the make-up of a small town and displays both the town at its ugliest(when the town so easily and realistically descends into a mob) and at its finest(when they discover the little girl's real whereabouts and set out to try and rescue her). The actors/actresses in this film are well-chosen as they look and act like real townfolk.

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.

In 1951, Rosa Parks had not yet declined to move to the back of the bus, the schools had yet to be desegregated, and pleas for racial equality were generally spurned as part of a `pinko' agenda. So It must have taken some measure of courage to make this movie, for one of its two themes is racism. Its second theme – and the one that ultimately trumps the first – involves the rescue of a little black girl (and parallels, minus the cynicism, Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole/The Big Carnival of the same year).

The trouble starts with the girl's disappearance. Rumors start to fly: A stranger was seen buying her a clump of posies. Is a child-killer on the loose? Will he get away with it because he's white? Soon fist-fights, beatings and acts of arson, all committed on racial grounds, tear the down apart. The drifter (Harry Morgan), when found, proves to be related to a town big-wheel who, when his construction company is set afire, becomes the chief rabble-rouser. The townsfolk of color, meanwhile, clamor for Morgan's hide. It falls to the sheriff (Richard Rober) first to locate the girl then to stem the violence before a lynch mob coalesces. Suddenly, by chance, the girl is discovered deep down an abandoned well....

Probably, in 1951, there was no way out of the story than the one taken. But it's pure Hollywood – which is to say, a harp concerto played on the heart strings. The whole town, black and white, joins together in a tense, all-night rescue effort helmed by the construction magnate and Morgan, who luckily happens to be a mining engineer. (Here, something curious occurs. The digging of a parallel shaft, with monstrous drill-bits assaulting the earth to Dimitri Tiomkin's pounding score, becomes all but abstract – and primitively, uncomfortably sexual.)

The minor but ever interesting Russell Rouse wrote and, in his first go, directed The Well (though he shares that credit with producer Leo Popkin). It features a large (and largely unknown) cast who bring authenticity and occasionally depth to their roles. The story holds attention – despite a glaring break in the middle, when the focus shifts from racism to rescue. And again, for its era, it was bold and topical (brutal race riots plagued post-war America). But from a modern perspective, it just ends too soon. The uplifting rescue will be the talk of the town for three days, while the ugliness that flared up will linger on. There's not a hint of that at the conclusion, with Tiomkin outdoing even John Williams in gaudy triumphalism.

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.