Casting Hunsecker was a bigger problem. The description of the character in Lehman's story suggests someone with the physical characteristics of Charles Laughton. For a time, Orson Welles was considered. If United Artists hadn't pressed for a big name in the role of Hunsecker, Lehman would have preferred character actor Hume Cronyn, a small man who would have captured Hunsecker's dominating presence through a sheer force of malice. (To get an idea of Cronyn's ability to play a complex villain, see him in Brute Force (1947), Jules Dassin's bleak prison melodrama). That intriguing possibility was discarded though once Lancaster decided he would have more boxoffice clout in the role and cast himself as Hunsecker; HHL was his production company, after all.
Lancaster made a wise choice in hiring legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, who had lensed two of the actor's earlier films, Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) and The Rose Tattoo (1955). While Howe and Mackendrick were in New York to scout locations, they formulated the idea of starting scenes in exteriors then following the characters indoors. They also took multiple still shots from various fixed points so Mackendrick could learn "the image of New York." Back in Hollywood, the director taped the shots as panoramas on his office wall. After living with the stills for a time, Mackendrick hit upon the idea of conveying the claustrophobic atmosphere of the city's canyoned streets by shooting low, with the buildings looming over the characters. This technique also gave the threatening, unsettling effect of showing the characters knifing upward into the air. Later filmmakers, such as Sydney Pollack, were heavily influenced by this unconventional use of lenses and their framing. "They reversed the normal shooting concept. They shot almost every master shot with long-focus lenses, from very far away, in order to pack the buildings in tightly behind the people," Pollack explained. "Then they shot their close-ups with wide-angle lenses, to keep the background in focus and, again, an awareness of the buildings. These techniques create an overall effect, in which lay moviegoers feel oppressed by the city, without necessarily understanding why."
With temperatures well below freezing, the exteriors were shot at night from late December 1956 into January 1957. The interiors were shot, with a couple of exceptions, in February and March at the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Art Director Edward Carrere, who later won an Oscar for his work on Camelot (1968), re-created in great detail the "21" Club and Toots Shor's nightspot. He and Howe seized on the idea of building the sets a couple feet off the floor to make room for spewing smoke pots that gave the clubs their cigarette-heavy feel. They also had the walls and ceilings smeared with oil to give the sets a slimy sheen and carry the look of the dirty, rain-soaked streets indoors. Howe also decided to fit Lancaster with thick glasses, often smudged with oil, that when lit closely from a high angle, would deepen his eye sockets and produce a strange mask-like effect.
The careful preparation of the film's look gave the actors an evocative space in which to build their performances, and heightened the sense of betrayal, danger and sleaziness that permeates Odets's script. Curtis immediately threw himself into the role of Falco, acting so keyed up on the first take, Mackendrick had to devise obstacles and moves to slow him down. Lancaster and Curtis meshed well together, and drew inspiration - at Mackendrick's suggestion - from the predatory dance in Ben Jonson's play Volpone. But Lancaster was a demanding actor, not always easy to work with, and his tendency to try to wrest the directing reins from Mackendrick, combined with difficult location shooting on a film without a completed script, caused a lot of tension on the set. Mackendrick didn't ease the situation with his own fears and suspicions, based on what he knew of HHL's cutthroat methods and Lehman's parting warning: "They chew directors alive." Tipped off by the movie╒s editor, Alan Crosland, that HHL would fire him after principal photography and recut the movie to their liking, Mackendrick shot the much disputed final scene in a manner which would be difficult to edit (It was a moving camera shot). He wanted to favor a female character's point of view over Lancaster's insistence that he and Curtis be given the final shot. The ploy worked because after he was fired, Lancaster delivered a final cut of the film and soon realized his mistake, eventually calling MacKendrick back in to fix the ending. But even armed with his own tricks, the director admitted to being "scared stiff" during the entire production. During a heated, alcohol-fueled argument over the disputed scene, Mackendrick said Lancaster began shouting, then "came at me across the room with that coiled-spring animal energy, like a panther, and vaulted over a sofa in one of the most graceful movements I've ever seen."
Lancaster began directing the other actors, particularly relative newcomer Martin Milner (who said he "never quite connected" with Mackendrick), and constantly challenged Mackendrick's interpretation of how the film should look and feel. For Curtis, Lancaster's behavior was an inevitable bleed-over between actor and character, both powerful, confident men who got to their positions by manipulating and controlling others. But despite the tremendous problems during production and the initial failure of the film at the box office, Mackendrick looked back on it years later as a valuable experience. "The moments of your greatest fear are also the moments you look back on as your greatest thrill," he said. "The danger is an aphrodisiac. It must be."
by Rob Nixon
