USA,
1949, 95 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
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John Berry
- prod
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Robert Sisk
- scr
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Alan Rivkin
- cam
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Harry Stradling
- editor
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Albert Akst
- cast
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Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan, William Conrad
- source
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Warner Bros Classics, 3903 West Olive Avenue, Suite 2217, Burbank, CA 91522. FAX: 818-954-3793
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COMMENTS
Part of The Unvanquished series; John Berry appeared in person.
OTHER
A taut rubber band is the central image of Tension, John Berry’s no-holds-barred thriller in which mild-mannered druggist Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart) works nights toward the purchase of a tract home, while his tougher-than-nails wife Claire (Audrey Totter) dreams of other men and finally goes out and gets herself one. An obsessed Quimby hatches a convoluted plan to murder her new lover. Someone beats him to the punch, but all the evidence points to the quivering Quimby, who finds himself the object of a manhunt. Claire’s cynicism seems to permeate the entire mood of the film; she may not be able to cook an egg, but hard-boiled dialogue is her specialty. Made just before Berry was forced to flee the country for “Un-American” activities, Tension reveals the unease, even violence, that lay beneath postwar America’s obsession with domesticity. Unfortunately, neither Warren nor Claire are suited to its suffocating demands. In fact, it drives them to murder. After watching this film, you can understand why Berry had to flee to France. This is no run-of-the-mill film noir, but a powerfully unsettling work that forces its audience to question the social and political forces that govern their lives. Just as Quimby is a strange mix of guilt and innocence, so too are viewers forced to confront their own active participation in a system that enslaves them.
FACTOID #200
Rockers, an entry at the 1978 SFIFF, was the first and only Jamaican feature film screened at the San Francisco International.
