Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #5: "The Prowler," directed by Joseph Losey

Last week’s install­ment, includ­ing links to pre­vi­ous weeks, here.

Farber: “A tabloid melo­drama of sex and avarice in sub­ur­bia, out of Cain by Joe Losey, fea­tur­ing almost per­fect act­ing by Evelyn Keyes as a hot, dumb, aver­age American babe who, find­ing the atten­tions of her disc-jockey hus­band begin­ning to pall, takes up with an amor­al rook­ie cop (nicely hammed up by Van Heflin). Sociologically sharp on stray and hitherto untouched items like motels, ath­let­ic nos­tal­gia, the impact of nou­veau riche fur­nish­ings on an ambi­tious né’er-do-well, the poten­tially explos­ive bore­dom of the child­less, uneducated, well-to-do house­wife with too much time on her hands.”

This too-little-seen pic­ture still packs some­thing like a scor­pi­on’s sting—for all the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of its con­tent, it’s too nuanced over­all to wal­lop the view­er. The set­ting is not just “sub­ur­bia;” it’s Los Angeles’ sub­ur­bia, which is one reas­on the pic­ture struck such a res­on­ant chord with crime nov­el­ist James Ellroy, who calls this “a mas­ter­piece of sexu­al creep­i­ness, insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion and suf­foc­at­ing, ugly pas­sion.” Indeed. What weird power the film retains; that creep­i­ness seems to prac­tic­ally ooze out of the cuts, leav­ing a weirdly metal­lic psych­ic residue, and some might note that it is remark­able that Losey achieved such mas­tery of this unique tone with just his third feature. 

Farber’s typ­ic­ally idio­syn­crat­ic list­ing of its high­lights is also typ­ic­ally on the money. “Athletic nos­tal­gia?” Well, yes, it’s reflec­ted in the creepy nar­ciss­ism of Heflin’s char­ac­ter, a one-time foot­ball hero who’s now a cop and who spends his off-hours in a shabby single room with his firing-range souven­ir and a bunch of muscle magazines. 

And there he shaves him­self in grim, weird sat­is­fac­tion, wait­ing from the call he just knows is gonna come from Keyes’ afore­men­tioned dumb, hot, aver­age American babe. For the film’s first half, their assig­na­tions are at the big hacienda-style house her hus­band bought for the couple—the house she stays cooped up in every night, listen­ing to said hus­band’s radio show, while Heflin’s cop moves in more and more bluntly. When he really clinches the deal, Losey’s cam­era pans to this image of Heflin’s police hat sit­ting atop the radio and the Hi-Fi hous­ing briefcase on which Hubby listens to acet­ates of his own show—a pithy and dis­taste­ful visu­al meta­phor of the sort that Losey would con­tin­ue to hone through­out his career.

Late in the film, the couple are forced to live as out­casts from civil­iz­a­tion, and their dan­cing takes on a more sur­real tinge. It’s bizarre, for sure, but noth­ing in The Prowler ever feels forced; the script, par­tially by an uncred­ited Dalton Trumbo, sneaks in a con­vin­cing rationale for their ghost-town exile early on. It’s a mar­velous con­struc­tion all around. Farber men­tions “the impact of nou­veau riche fur­nish­ings on an ambi­tious né’er-do-well,” and Losey, in Tom Milne’s book-length inter­view, men­tions that he and pro­duc­tion design­er John Hubley “spent a good deal of time try­ing to find the right sort of hor­ror for the Spanish house…[and] redu­cing and par­tic­u­lar­iz­ing the horror.” 

The dir­ect­or cred­its the pro­du­cer Sam Spiegel—here cred­ited under his fre­quent pseud­onym “S.P. Eagle”—with giv­ing him both the means and lat­it­ude to take the prop­er pains with the pic­ture. “[He] was a mar­velous pro­du­cer. His atti­tude was, ‘You’re right for this, but you’re not very exper­i­enced. I’ll give you the best cam­era­man in Hollywood, the best tech­ni­cians, the best first assist­ant. I don’t care what I pay, and you do it any way you want to.’ This was extraordin­ary.” The proof is in the cred­its: the DP was Arthur Miller (How Green Was My Valley), the pro­duc­tion design­er Boris Leven, the assist­ant dir­ect­or Robert Aldrich. According to bio­graph­er David Caute, this was the Hollywood film of which Losey was most proud. 

It is also the first film in which the theme that would help estab­lish his auteur status res­on­ates so cleanly. “The fem­in­ine role in Losey’s world is strictly sub­or­din­ate because of the his­tri­on­ic hys­teria of his act­ors,” Andrew Sarris notes in his entry on Losey in The American Cinema. “Men simply can­not cope with their lives and social insti­tu­tions, and they crack up with very lyr­ic­al res­ults.”  Yes. In sev­er­al respects Heflin’s Webb Garwood, who seems to have been crack­ing up before he has even been intro­duced to the view­er, is a dir­ect ante­cedent to Stanley Baker’s ruin­ous Tyvian Jones in Losey’s 1962’s Eve. To name just one oth­er fragile/brittle male Losey creation.

This is a remark­ably rich film on so many levels; hence, it pains me to report it’s not yet avail­able on com­mer­cial DVD. I owe my latest view­ing of it to the kind­ness of a col­lect­or. Varied rumors abound on the inter­et about the where­fores of its status, but noth­ing to indic­ate an immin­ent release. One hopes this situ­ation changes soon.