Knock on Any Door is a 1949 American courtroom trial film noir directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart. The movie was based on the 1947 novel of the same name by Willard Motley. The picture gave actor John Derek his breakthrough role as young hoodlum Nick Romano, whose motto was, "live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse."[2]
Plot
Mickey Knox and John Derek in Knock on Any Door
Against the wishes of his law partners, slick talking lawyer Andrew Morton takes the case of Nick Romano, a troubled punk from the slums, partly because he himself came from the same slums and partly because he feels guilty for his partner botching the criminal trial of Nick's father years earlier. Nick is on trial for shooting a policeman point-blank and faces execution if convicted.
Nick's history is presented through flashbacks showing him as a hoodlum committing one petty crime after another. Morton's wife Adele convinces him to play nursemaid to Nick in order to make Nick a better person. Nick then robs Morton of $100 after a fishing trip. Shortly after that, Nick marries Emma, and he tries to change his lifestyle. He takes on job after job but keeps getting fired because of his recalcitrance. He wastes his paycheck playing dice, wanting to buy Emma some jewelry, and then walks out on another job after punching his boss. Feeling a lack of hope of ever being able to live a normal life, Nick decides to return to his old ways, sticking to his motto: "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse." He abandons Emma, even after she tells him that she is pregnant. After Nick commits a botched hold-up at a train station, he returns to Emma so as to take her with him as he flees. He finds that she had committed suicide by gas from an open oven door.
Morton's strategy in the courtroom is to argue that slums breed criminals and that society is to blame for crimes committed by people who live in such miserable conditions. Morton argues that Romano is a victim of society and not a natural-born killer. However, his strategy does not have the desired effect on the jury, thanks to the badgering of the seasoned and experienced District Attorney Kerman, who delivers question after question until Nick shouts out his admission of guilt. Morton, who is naive to believe in his client's innocence, is shocked by Nick's confession. Nick decides to change his plea to guilty. During the sentencing hearing, Morton manages to arouse some sympathy for the plight of those in a dead-end existence. He pleads that anyone who "knocks on any door" may find a Nick Romano. Nevertheless, Nick is sentenced to die in the electric chair. Morton visits Nick prior to the execution and watches him walk down the hall to the death chamber.
Producer Mark Hellinger purchased the rights to the novel Knock on Any Door by Willard Motley and Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando were to star in the production. However, after Hellinger died in late 1947, Robert Lord and Bogart formed a corporation to produce the film: Santana Productions, named after Bogart's private sailing yacht.[4]Jack L. Warner was reportedly furious at this, fearing that other stars would do the same and major studios would lose their power.[citation needed]
According to critic Hal Erickson, the often-repeated credo spoken by the character Nick Romano--"Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse"—would become the "clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth."[5]Knock on Any Door is the second Hollywood movie adapted from a novel by an African American author. The first was The Foxes of Harrow by novelist Frank Yerby, which starred Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara and was released in 1947.
Reception
Critical response
Treating criminality with kid gloves and blaming law abiding society for its ills didn't go over well with the public or the critics. Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, called the film "a pretentious social melodrama" and blasted the film's message and the screenplay. He wrote, "Rubbish! The only shortcoming of society which this film proves is that it casually tolerates the pouring of such fraudulence onto the public mind. Not only are the justifications for the boy's delinquencies inept and superficial, as they are tossed off in the script, but the nature and aspect of the hoodlum are outrageously heroized."[6]
The staff at Variety magazine was more receptive of the film, writing: "An eloquent document on juvenile delinquency, its cause and effect, has been fashioned from Knock on Any Door...Nicholas Ray's direction stresses the realism of the script taken from Willard Motley's novel of the same title, and gives the film a hard, taut pace that compels complete attention."[7]
^Slide, Anthony. Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works from the First Half of the Twentieth Century by , pages 135-136, 1st edition, 2003. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press. ISBN1-56023-413-X.
^McCarty, Clifford (1966). Bogey - The Films of Humphrey Bogart (1st ed.). New York, N.Y.: Cadillac Publishing Co., Inc. p. 147.
^Silver, Alain, and Elizabeth Ward, eds. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style; film noir synopsis and analysis of Knock on Any Door by Blake Lucas and Alain Silver, page 162, 3rd edition, 1992. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN0-87951-479-5.
