The road is the greatest of false promises in the shadow world of noir. It offers desperate, world-weary types a sense of freedom from the grips of fate or the sins of the past, but every seemingly endless stretch of asphalt inevitably runs into a dead end.
Joe Sullivan (Dennis O’Keefe), the protagonist of Anthony Mann’s 1948 film Raw Deal, seems to know this even before he breaks out of prison with the help of his tough, possessive girlfriend, Pat (Claire Trevor). With good behavior, he’ll be paroled after three years, at least according to Ann (Marsha Hunt), the pretty, young legal caseworker who’s taken an interest in his case, but that sounds like an eternity to the fortysomething convict, who’s suffocating on the inside and wants some fresh air, pronto, no matter the price.
After Joe’s getaway car breaks down, courtesy of a bullet to the gas tank, he and Pat drag Ann into their dirty business, taking her car and bringing her along for the ride since she’s a little too itchy to phone the police, thinking it’s the only way to save Joe’s life. Raw Deal, then, follows a love triangle that’s made all the more uncomfortable given that its three sides are stuck on the road together. Throughout, romantic longing is met with equal doses of despair and a sense of entrapment that the trio can’t escape no matter how fast they drive.
Mann and cinematographer John Alton fill nearly every frame with stark shadows, frequently using canted angles and low-angle shots to further intensify the stifling, oppressive atmosphere as Joe and Pat feel the world closing in on them. Alton’s work is a constantly thrilling display of darkness and light that mirrors Joe’s internal moral battle, as well as the anguish Pat experiences as she sees Joe falling for Ann right in front of her eyes.
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s Trevor who provides the film’s voiceover, and her strained, wavering voice, accompanied by Paul Sawtell’s eerie theremin-laced score, endows Pat with a dignity that she otherwise wouldn’t have earned. Pat’s pronouncements exude a deep yearning and anticipation that somehow manage to sound hopeless even when her words are full of hope. She may be the blond bad girl, who appeals to Joe’s worst instincts, but the film filters much of the proceedings through her perspective, rendering her undying devotion to Joe, who, after all, has never even said he loves her, as something that’s both tragic and laudable.
Unfortunately for Joe, he not only finds himself stuck between two women, but the law has him surrounded and his old boss, the sadistic, pyromaniac Rick (Raymond Burr), who he took the wrap for, now wants him dead. If Pat’s “raw deal” is Joe’s waning feelings for her in the face of her commitment to helping him, Joe’s is the harsh lesson that “honor amongst thieves” is clearly just a phrase people say, not a code that anyone actually lives by.
The emotional violence unleashed by Joe, Pat, and Ann is topped only by Rick’s startling outbursts of physical violence. In a moment that foreshadows the famously vicious moment in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat where Gloria Grahame’s character takes a pot of hot coffee to the face, Rick, annoyed at Joe’s successful escape, flings a flaming drink in his girlfriend’s (Chili Williams) face after she simply bumps into him while dancing. His fascination with fire surfaces throughout, particularly in the film’s frenzied climax, but it’s also Rick’s cowardice and volatility that makes him such a terrifying villain, to friends and foes alike.
Collateral damage is the order of the day in Raw Deal, as virtually everyone ends up betrayed, unhappy, or dead. In a fitting detail, Rick’s hideout is on Corkscrew Alley, the same street that Joe and Pat grew up on. It’s as if they were driving along a corkscrew ever since Joe’s escape, seemingly always moving forward but really just going around in circles. Late in the film, Joe rambles on about marriage and having kids to Pat, who, wearing a veil and barely listening, seems to anticipate the death that’s on the horizon. A devastating shot of her dour expression reflected in a black clock even further illustrates that while Joe’s saying all the right words, the timing’s all wrong. But even timing doesn’t really seem to matter in the world of the film. If everyone’s getting a raw deal, all time will do is eventually catch up with all of them.
Image/Sound
This is a re-release of ClassicFlix’s 2018 Blu-ray and it includes the same 2K transfer of a restoration that was sourced from a 35mm nitrate print. The intervening four years have done nothing to dim the beauty of that transfer, which boasts stellar contrast ratio that highlights the film’s remarkable use of shadows and darkness as negative space. The image detail is also quite strong throughout—a bit less so in wide shots, but as the bulk of the film uses medium shots and close-ups, this is only a minor flaw. The stereo audio is fairly strong, featuring clean, crisp dialogue, aside from a few echoey spots that sound native to the original audio.
Extras
Author and film historian Jeremy Arnold provides an astute commentary that covers a lot of ground in under 80 minutes. He spends ample time on the fruitful collaborations between director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton, and discusses the noir conventions that the film subverts, including the shifting dynamics of the story’s love triangle and having a female character provide the voiceover. In a short making-of featurette, biographer and producer Alan K. Rode and film historians Julie Kirgo and Courtney Joyner further probe the film’s strong female characters and Mann’s creative use of on- and off-screen violence. Rode and Joyner appear again in the five-minute Dennis O’Keefe: An Extraordinary Ordinary Guy, touching on the actor’s career in vaudeville and Hollywood, with some extra insight added by O’Keefe’s son, Jim. The release also comes with a restoration demonstration, an image gallery, and a handful of trailers, as well as a 24-page booklet with an essay by author Max Alvarez.
Overall
The preeminent collaboration between director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton finally gets an HD release that fully showcases its stunning visuals.
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