Police lieutenant Tunner (Barry Sullivan) meets his match in a Cajun prisoner named Jory (Vittorio Gassman) who is serving time in the Branville State Penitentiary for robbery; he was the getaway driver in a successful bank holdup. After a knockdown dragout fistfight between the two men in Jory's cell, the prisoner finally agrees to reveal his partners in crime. On the way to the district attorney's office, however, a car accident results in Jory's escape from custody and he hops a freight train back to his home in the Louisiana bayou. Tunner and his partner Goodwin (William Conrad) follow in hot pursuit and their hunt turns deadly as they track Jory through the dangerous swampland which is teeming with alligators, quicksand and other perils.

Cry of the Hunted (1953) was one of three films that director Joseph H. Lewis made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the fifties (the other two were A Lady Without Passport [1950] and Desperate Search [1952]) and, while it is not as gripping or as visually dazzling as Lewis' film noir landmarks Gun Crazy [1950] and The Big Combo [1955], this B-movie programmer is atmospheric and tautly directed. While Cry of the Hunted resists easy categorization in terms of genre, it works best as a character study of two intense and determined personalities who refuse to compromise their own personal codes of honor in dealing with each other.

At the time of filming, Vittorio Gassman was still married to Shelley Winters and under contract to MGM, who tried unsuccessfully to groom him as an international matinee idol in lavish Technicolor productions such as Sombrero [1953] and Rhapsody [1954]. While Cry of the Hunted places Gassman in a more realistic and unglamorized milieu, it also demonstrates the limitations of this versatile and acclaimed Italian actor in an English language film. Barry Sullivan fares much better as the pursuing law enforcer and William Conrad and Polly Bergen provide lively and occasionally amusing contrasts to the often grim proceedings; Conrad is typically sarcastic as Tunner's underpaid partner who wants his job and Bergen is impossibly upbeat and perky as Tunner's perfect wife - not only does she have a martini waiting for him after a hard day at the office but she even packs an elaborate picnic basket for him (complete with individually wrapped and labeled sandwiches) to take on his swamp pursuit of Jory.

In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich for the book Who the Devil Made It, Lewis recalled the making of Cry of the Hunted and his other MGM films, noting "...if you asked for a little clothes closet, they'd give you an eight-room house. It's true. You know, for a guy who loves sets and settings, that would be great. The art department wanted to give you everything...I found when I had a sequence to shoot with fog in it, they wanted to give me two huge stages and build a whole swamp set, put a boat in there and everything. I knew what that meant: you'd fog up the scene and after you made a shot, you'd have to wait for a half hour or forty-five minutes until the huge fans blew out all the old smoke. Right? Well, that was the Metro way. I wasn't about to do that – I wanted to do it on the outside, which we did eventually."

Lewis did, however, shoot a highly stylized and bizarre dream sequence on an interior set for Cry of the Hunted in which Barry Sullivan's character has a nightmare where he's taunted by a devilish Vittorio Gassman. It is as feverish and hallucinatory as some of the more flamboyant moments in Lewis' most evocative film noirs. The film is also one of several Lewis movies in which a swamp figures prominently in the storyline.

Cry of the Hunted received little attention or praise when it was first released and was seen as little more than a routine programmer. While it might not be among Lewis' best work, it's a compelling minor drama in its own way and Lewis had fond memories of the cast: "I went out and got Bill Conrad, who I think is a fascinating actor. He certainly proved himself to be a very fine director, a fine producer, fine everything. He has great talent – magnificent actor. And it was wonderful working with Vittorio Gassman."

Producer: William Grady, Jr.
Director: Joseph H. Lewis
Screenplay: Jack Leonard (screenplay and story); Marion Wolfe (story)
Cinematography: Harold Lipstein
Art Direction: Malcolm Brown, Cedric Gibbons
Film Editing: Conrad A. Nervig
Cast: Vittorio Gassman (Jory), Barry Sullivan (Lt. Tunner), Polly Bergen (Janet Tunner), William Conrad (Goodwin), Mary Zavian (Ella), Robert Burton (Warden Keeley), Harry Shannon (Sheriff Brown), Jonathan Cott (Deputy Davis).
BW-79m.

by Jeff Stafford

SOURCES:
Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Legendary Film Directors by Peter Bogdanovich (Ballantine)
"Joseph H. Lewis" by Robert Keser, Senses of Cinema web site (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com)
www.afi.com
IMDB