In The Time Of The Soviet-American World War II Friendship-With Edward Myrtryk’s Seven Miles From Alcatraz In Mind-Again  

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

Recently I responded to an old time film review, the Seven Miles From Alcatraz mentioned in the headline to this piece by my old friend and competitor Sandy Salmon (mentioned below in more detail) in order to express dismay not at the review which was perfectly okay but at what the plotline was trying to get at, what propaganda points since this was a World War II production were being made in the film itself. The plotline centered on a couple of escapees from the “Rock,” from Alcatraz out there in that big Japan seas swirl called San Francisco Bay where American land ended then (this during the height of World War II before bombed-out Hawaii acquired vaunted statehood to extend the empire). My objection to that plotline was that I found it incredulous that a filmmaker, a filmmaker who later would fall under the ax when the Cold War red scare freeze came rushing in (and later turn fink when they put the squeeze on), Edward Dmytryk, would bring a couple of hardened shoot ‘em up cons into the “popular front” against the Fascist Axis whatever his political sympathies were at the time.

I got two diverse reactions from that simple comment. One, from the unusual red-baiters who saw my comment as just another part of the international communist conspiracy to foul-up the pure American air, the purity of the cinema (using that exact high blown word which told me a lot about where they were coming from culturally) even some seventy years after the fact. I was befuddled by this tact since apparently these people had not heard the news, the rather old news, the Soviet empire had been dismantled about twenty-five years ago and was no longer in effect (although Russia is much in the news again these days but for different reasons).

The other respond was “shock” that I could not believe that two felons, two stalwart Americans in the immersed in the felony community, could identify with the just cause of the anti-Nazi struggle. In short that I wore my political incorrectness on my sleeve for all the candid world to see. Apparently in their view these guys who were ready to commit murder and mayhem against the denizens of the lighthouse that lammed onto in their escape until the Nazi menace confronted them in the face. The minute I saw those words felony community or maybe it was career criminal community I was seething at that point I knew I was in deep trouble.

For those who did not see the original comment (or Sandy’s rather ordinary but well-written review of the film which took the whole experience at face value I have re-posted it below with a few added points to address the “better dead than red” and better dead than politically incorrect comment. This should end the tempest in a teapot.    

*********

Okay, okay regular readers of this space (and of the on-line version of the American Film Gazette) know that I have, how did Pete Markin the administrator of this site put it, oh yeah, put myself out to pasture. In other words retired from the day to day grind of film reviews what with the inevitable deadlines sneaking up and giving me heartburn when I haven’t figured out a “hook” to tie the review up with and Pete is e-mailing me every other minute for copy like some whirling dervish (no offense to the dervish community intended) I had had enough. I had conned my old friend, colleague and competitor Sandy Salmon (from that same American Film Gazette where he was a regular film critic with a by-line long before I began to occasionally write for the publication) into doing the yeoman’s work until he in his turn will retire and let younger hands get their chance. (Maybe under the circumstances I such not have used the word “conned” which might offend members of the career criminal community so I will say “browbeat” which I assume will offend no “community.”) I also mentioned in that notice of retirement that I would occasionally comment on whatever I felt like commenting on as long as I didn’t have to meet some damn deadline.     

I have of late been impressed by some of Sandy’s reviews which are pretty good and which I have no quarrel with. What I have noticed when he reviews older films which is what this space is more and more dedicated to given the paucity of current first rate films is that some remark he makes or some insight of his gets me to the computer to make a comment. That is what I am up to today in regard to a recent review he did of a 1940s World War II film, part propaganda, part action thriller entitled Seven Miles From Alcatraz. The “hook” for me was not the fact that it was directed by Edward Myrtryk who would after the war be red-baited and scapegoated as one of the Hollywood Ten, guys who wouldn’t snitch on their fellows who might have in the past been reds, you know, communists . Honorably done at the time although unlike Howard Fast and Dalton Trumbo he eventually spilled his guts to whoever would listen in order to save his wretched career. That direction might have been part of what I was looking at which I will explain in a minute since the thrust of the film fit in very well with what the American Communist Party on orders from Moscow were doing to help the war effort once the Soviets became allies of the Allied Alliance in 1941.        

No, what got me about this film was that even hardened criminals could under the story-line presented aid the war effort, could in this case be anti-Nazi fighters. My first reaction was WTF, yeah, that is exactly what I thought. Here is the gist of the story. A couple of hard cases tired of Alcatraz, the “Rock”, the supposedly inescapable Rock out in the dangerous Frisco Bay swirls and eddies escaped to a lighthouse out in the harbor, out by the Japan currents from what I could gather. At that lighthouse there was the lighthouse keeper (an important job in the treacherous waters in the Bay), his daughter and a couple of other guys, one a goof but the other who just so happens to turn out to be a Nazi spy. A Nazi spy who was connected with a group of fellow conspirators who have plans to blow up half of Frisco town once they grabbed a submarine ride off that lighthouse’s reaches and get back to the Fatherland. Naturally they get nowhere once these cons get their patriotic fervor up after they “realize” that if Frisco town goes the Rock goes too if they get captured and are returned there. The conspiracy and the sub once the military gets a fix on them from the lighthouse keeper after the cons struggle with the Nazi agents trying to get back home goes to the briny deep. Fair enough nobody liked the idea, least of all me, of half of Frisco town being blown up.

What is really galling though is the idea that these hardened hoods were to be considered cinematically part of the great united front to wipe the Nazis and their allies off the face of the earth. Guys from Steubenville, Ohio and Hazard, Kentucky who were itching to volunteer once the Japanese did their dastardly deeds at Pearl Harbor I understand as part of the front. Guys building ships, welding like crazy on three shifts 24/7/365 to produce a ship a day I get it. Rosy the riveter picking up the slack when the menfolk went off to war great. Granny planting her Victory Garden, nice work. Kids running around getting string and aluminum foil for the war effort good young citizens. But cons who would as soon as put a slug in you, hey, in that light-keeper if it came to it before they “got religion” on what was what with the damn Nazis no I cannot buy that. What was Dmytryk thinking of anyway when he took on this film and the screwy story line.