Ruthless

Sydney Greenstreet and Zachary Scott in Ruthless

Edgar G. Ulmer's Ruthless is a good melodrama from 1948. Zachary Scott plays Horace Woodruff Vendig, a cold and, yes, ruthless financial wiz who tramples friends and relations on his way to the top. The umpteenth iteration of a powerful man who gains the world, but loses his soul. The relatively concurrent examples of Douglas Sirk's Caught and King Vidor's The Fountainhead are good points of comparison. Scott is superb as the sociopathic titan. This role and his lead in Jean Renoir's The Southerner show a range not exploited by his work for the major studios where he was often typecast as the oleaginous cad he assayed so successfully in Michael Curtiz's Mildred Pierce.

Ruthless was produced under the auspices of Eagle-Lion films. Eagle-Lion initially arose at the end of the second world war as a means for the Rank Organization and Pathe to distribute British and French films in the US. It financed independent American productions between 1946 and 1948 including Ruthless. Eagle-Lion had some success with its production of Anthony Mann's T-Men and the stateside distribution of The Archers' The Red Shoes, but the company tended to overspend on its productions, particularly on casts, and soon landed in financial oblivion. This flaw in Eagle-Lion's business plan helps Ruthless. The production values are luxe compared to a picture like Ulmer's Detour and he has a much more tony cast to work with than usual. 

The film's structure utilizes multiple flashbacks centering each around a woman Vendig uses and discards. The device is overly complicated and robs the film of momentum. At least three screenwriters worked to adapt Dayton Stoddart's novel Prelude to Night and this is probably a case of too many cooks. Louis Hayward and Diana Lynn are more than adequate in nothing parts. Lynn portrays Scott's first love, who he swipes from Hayward, and then portrays the illegitimate daughter that is spawned by their union; though this is not commented on as to avoid the censor's scissors. This is always a creepy, but money saving, device and is especially so here when Scott, who is unaware he has issue (and issues), starts macking on his daughter. This device has seemed to go out of style. I recall it being used as late as Otto Preminger's The Cardinal (1963), though I'm sure I'm missing something.

Lucile Bremer and Sydney Greenstreet are fairly tedious and are part of the reason the last section flags. Greenstreet, whom I am a fan of, seems weak and unfocused. However, the ill-used Martha Vickers is terrific here as are Edith Barrett, Dennis Hoey, Joyce Arling and, as Scott's feckless Dad, Raymond Burr. Ulmer pulls no punches with the material. Dollying in for emotional impact and using a whip pan to gauge reactions to revelations, Ulmer is able to transcend the tired conventions of story often told and offer a melodrama with vigor.