Boomerang! (1947) - film review

The ordered calm of a small Connecticut town is shattered when a highly respected priest is shot dead one evening by an unknown assassin.  The local newspapers whip up a public outcry and the Reform Party politicians who currently run City Hall fear for their jobs.  The opposing party intends to make as much political capital as they can from the police’s failure to find the killer.  Under increasing pressure, the police round up dozens of suspects and a young unemployed man named John Waldron is charged and arrested.  Under brutal police interrogation, the suspect signs a confession and a public hearing is hastily arranged.  State Attorney Henry Harvey has the task of prosecuting Waldron but he surprises the court by announcing that he sees inconsistencies in the evidence against the accused man.   Outside the courtroom, Harvey’s Reform Party friends put pressure on him to secure a conviction, pointing out the consequences for the town if the priest’s killing were to go unpunished.  Can the life of one man really be worth so much trouble?

This dark portrayal of the seedy sado-masochistic marriage of American politics and justice, based on a real life case from 1924, established the young Elia Kazan as one of Hollywood’s most promising directors in the late 1940s.  It was the first in a series of highly effective realist dramas in which Kazan explored some significant social issues, in a refreshingly direct way.   Boomerang may not quite have the artistic brilliance and impact of some of Kazan’s later films, such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954), but it is a well-directed piece, has some excellent performances, and concludes with one of cinema’s most riveting courtroom sequences.  And, if that’s not enough, it’s also a film noir classic.  

The film’s producer was Louis de Rochemont, whose background in making newsreel documentaries is reflected in many of the films he produced.  As well as Boomerang, he also produced the Henry Hathaway directed features The House on 92nd Street (1945) and 13 Rue Madeleine (1947).  What these films share is a distinctive look that combines film noir with documentary-style realism, achieved through the use of recognisable real locations and rigorously naturalistic performances. 

What sets Boomerang apart from similar film noir dramas is the impression that what we are seeing is not fiction but real life, with real characters becoming enmeshed in an insidious web of political corruption, a deadly game of right and might, in which the victim is not one man but the whole of society.

Try to spot the distinguished playwright Arthur Miller – he appears briefly in the police line-up scene.

© James Travers 2008

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