And speaking of limps, I just saw an interestingly odd movie titled Act of Violence. It’s a very noir movie, set in and around Los
Angeles, shortly after World War Two – it was released in 1948 - and although
it has some standard nourish elements, not least car chases, there are some
interesting walking elements too.
As IMDB more or less has it: “An
embittered, vengeful POW (played by Robert Ryan – he’s the guy with the limp –
that’s him above, crossing the street) stalks his former commanding officer (Van Heflin, who’s
trying to live a new and decent life in the California hinterlands – a
fictional town called Santa Lisa) who betrayed his men's escape attempt from a
Nazi prison camp.” Meaty stuff.
It’s directed by Fred Zinnerman and based
on a story by Collier Young, who was married to Joan Fontaine and Ida Lupino,
among others, so you know he wasn’t afraid of strong women. He also created Ironside,
a hero who it must be said didn’t do a lot of walking.
Act of
Violence has scenes set all over the place,
including Big Bear and Glendale (the Glendale station stands in for Santa Lisa),
but it’s when Van Heflin goes to downtown L.A. for some kind of trade
conference, and falls in with some bad seeds, that things get really
psychogeographic.
We see the mean streets of Bunker Hill,
the Angel’s Flight Railway, the 3rd Street Tunnel (that's it above I think – though, if you
told me it was the 2nd Street Tunnel I wouldn’t argue with
you). The city looks magnificently
menacing and magnificently unfamiliar, and no place for anybody to go walking at
night.
Noir though the movie may be, the poster, is
definitely colorful.
