Hugo Fregonese's Black Tuesday, from 1954, is a superb noir. Gangster boss Vincent Canelli (Edward G. Robinson) is on death row for a long list of misdeeds. The first twenty minutes or so of this B picture details a jailbreak masterminded by Vincent's main squeeze, Hatti, played impressively by Jean Parker. Canelli makes sure to take along murderer and bank robber Peter Manning (Peter Graves) who has 200,000 clams stashed away from his heist. They, along with some hostages and minions, hide out on the top floor of an abandoned warehouse. Things do not go as planned.
Black Tuesday is a taut and expressive film. There are no wasted expository moments in police stations or newspaper editorial rooms. Every part of its construction is primed to spring the trap of its narrative. Farran Smith Nehme has brought up the theme of confinement in Fregonese's work and Black Tuesday is a prime example. The set design and photography of the film emphasize this theme. The world of the film is one of cages within cages, whether they be found in warehouses, banks or jails. Stanley Cortez's cinematography is a treat and a feat. He gives a low angle portentousness to his character shots and a deterministic framing (particularly the grim theater of the execution room) to his establishing shots. This meshes with the themes of Sydney Boehm's (The Big Heat, Fregonese's The Raid) script. When encased by the warehouse set, Fregonese and Cortez always seem able to frame background characters as a way to comment on the foreground action.
Boehm's screenplay posits that, in a state where capital punishment exists, is the criminal wrong to feel persecuted. Canelli uses this argument to defend his own sociopathy, which is rammed home in a scene in which he repairs a toy tank so he can watch it run over some plush toys. A stuffed cobra is introduced ominously and obviously. The character of Peter Manning is that of a criminal with a conscience, drawn to contrast with the nihilism of Canelli. It is this blackness which provides a great opportunity for Robinson. In what would prove to be a farewell to gangster roles, he is sulphuric. Jean Parker (Bluebeard, The Gunfighter) , in a moll role that is a lot less demeaning than Claire Trevor's similar character in Key Largo, is compelling as a woman so in thrall to her lover that she cannot fathom his moral odiousness. Peter Graves offers his warmest, most three dimensional performance. The cast is full of familiar faces turning in solid performances including Jack Kelly, Millburn Stone, Russell Johnson, and William Schallert.
For decades Fregonese's work has been relatively neglected. Now thanks to having retrospectives in Bologna and New York, he has been getting deserved recognition. Of all the directors not listed in Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema, Fregonese and Cy Endfield seem to be the most egregious omissions. I first stumbled upon Fregonese in my childhood when my Civil War mania lead me to watch The Raid, the film Fregonese directed just before Black Tuesday. The Raid chronicles an assault upon St. Albans, Vermont by Confederate soldiers based in Canada. It also features a jailbreak. Reseeing it recently, I found it as compelling as when I was ten, especially Van Heflin's agitated lead and Lucien Ballard's gorgeous color cinematography. I have sought out Fregonese's films since my youth and none have matched the power of The Raid until I saw Black Tuesday.
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