"99 River Street": the ethics of violence and the meaning of suffering

"The noir city rumbles with danger and enticement. Bustling downtown areas appear as sinful and polluting. Phil Karlson has staged these panoramic views of his Sin City with all the exhilaration of a puritan fascinated by debauchery. The tangle of bodies, the blare of honky-tonk music, the swell of car horns, the nervously flashing signs create a dazzling visual and aural cacophony: the city as moral and sexual cesspool. Phil Karlson had somewhat better luck than Joseph H. Lewis.

Karlson’s noir style, unlike Fuller’s or Lewis’s, has documentary overtones; he works best on exposes of criminal corruption (Phenix City Story, Walking Tall) which pretend to a kind of cinematic journalism in their hardheaded, crusading manner. Phenix City Story begins, unforgettably, with a series of interviews by Los Angeles newscaster Clete Roberts with real people who experienced the crime wave that inundated their town. Made on an A budget, Walking Tall is a smoother and much less force-full portrait of mob rule than Phenix City Story. Both films reflect Karlson’s right-wing belief in countering violence with greater violence. Like Fuller, he is a true political reactionary who responds to crime as a stain on the American landscape. Karlson has a vigilante mentality." -"The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir" (2008) by Foster Hirsch

Frank Faylen and John Payne in "99 River Street" (1953) directed by Phil Karlson

"99 River Street" is not a semi-documentary crime film: its lead is not a cop or government agent. But it does share one characteristic of the semi-documentaries: its finale takes place in an industrial area, here a docks. As in the semi-documentaries, this area is exploited to the max to make a photogenic background for the action.

The Finale: Outdoor Staircases: The finale contains some of Karlson's beloved outdoor staircases: First there is a short ladder the villain and hero climb. Then a ramp leading up to a ship. Finally, above the ramp, there is a staircase on which the hero and villain stage their final battle. The Art Deco porthole windows on the saloon at the end, recall the Deco building in Kansas City Confidential. Source: mikegrost.com

"99 River Street" takes place in New York. Its hero, Ernie Driscoll (John Payne), is an ex-prizefighter with a damaged eye. Its central metaphor is Driscoll's bad eye, which looks and looks but does not see.

Linda James (Evelyn Keyes) thinks she can be a great actress. As Ernie tells Linda: "A chance at the top. It's the most important thing in the world". This is a fantasy the film destroys and then rebuilds in altered form. "99 River Street" gives us an America that has worsened in time. Its myths are used up. The future has no room for high expectations.

John Payne plays his glum, drab dupe with a rigid sorrow and despair. He even roughs up his friend Stan (Frank Faylen), the film's voice of reason. Accompanying the insecurity is a view of the past as a golden age -an age of faith, hope, trust, decency, and a shared sense of reality. Even as it points to a happy future, the film does not depart from its premise that the nature of things is difficult to perceive. It simply alters its tone towards the comic. The script makes explicit at the beginning and at the end that "there's something critical the matter with Driscoll's eye" and that "he's fighting on instinct alone". Violence based on instinct is good; it represents a basic will to live, to be human. Violence that is mechanical, impersonal, cerebral, staged -Christopher's, Mickey's, Victor's, the violence of the theatre and of the boxing ring- is bad. The dark, dank, claustrophobic world of "99 River Street" was humanized by pain, suffering and feeling". -"The Big Book of Noir" by Lee Server, Martin H. Greenberg & Ed Gorman (1998)

Between 1952 and 1954 three popular and Oscar winning motion pictures featured a retired boxer as the protagonist: "The Quiet Man", "From Here to Eternity" (1953), and "On the Waterfront". Like "The Killers", each of these films portrays the boxer after he departs from competition, although his experience as a fighter is central to the drama. A similar plot device appears in modest productions from the same period, including "99 River Street", "The Battler" (1955) and “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1956).

This cycle of films about the retired boxer testifies to development of the internal structure of the boxing film genre. Furthermore, these productions anticipate the eclipse of the boxing film, for after a final flurry of releases in 1955–56, the boxing film remained nearly dormant for twenty years. In each case boxing constitutes a tormenting past with which the protagonist must be reconciled. In the tradition of film noir, boxing in the “after the ring” cycle evokes a forceful, dark psychological experience. Not simply a memory, the ring career has become a disturbing state of mind lodged in the subconscious and crying out for rectification. In boxing noir the flashback was widely used, but in the “after the ring” cycle a variety of modes are employed to portray past trauma and set the stage for its reconciliation.

Typically, the ex-prizefighter is a loner, an individual struggling not so much against a rival as to overcome inner torment, thereby putting an end to his isolation by establishing a bond with others and reformulating his social position. In each case the agony of the ring animates the psychic conflicts motivating the drama. Two historical examples animate the crisis of masculinity embodied by the screen boxer: the ethnic commoner threatened by the Depression featured in the Popular Front cycle, and the returning World War II veteran struggling to find his place in peacetime society, a thematic undercurrent in the noir cycle. Boxing can reference both competition without human fellowship and the warrior experience of combat violence. These two widely shared social phenomena continue to characterize the boxer during the “after the ring” cycle. However, these films assume a more introspective, thoughtful attitude.

The torment generated by ring memories provokes reflections about the ethics of violence and the meaning of suffering. The former boxer of "The Quiet Man", "99 River Street", "From Here to Eternity", "On the Waterfront", and "Requiem for a Heavyweight" uses his physical experience to reconcile a spiritual crisis. -"Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema" (2011), Leger Grindon