Date and Time for this Past Event
- Sunday, Oct 18, 2026 11:15am
Details
Intro by film historian Foster Hirsch
Disgraced ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley) masterminds a piece-of-cake bank robbery in upstate New York, but to pull it off he requires the cooperation of two dangerously mismatched men: gambling addict and jazzman Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) and hotheaded war veteran Earl Slater (Robert Ryan), whose racist antagonism threatens to thwart the seemingly fool-proof plan. Uncredited co-producer Belafonte hired blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky to adapt William P. McGivern’s novel, specifically to subvert the sanctimony of 1958’s THE DEFIANT ONES, a “feel-good” movie about racism. Robert Wise’s direction is as fresh and expressive as anything being done by the French New Wave of the period, and the score by John Lewis (recorded by a 22-piece orchestra that included his Modern Jazz Quartet bandmates) is innovative and exhilarating. With vivid supporting performances by Shelley Winters, Kim Hamilton and Gloria Grahame, this is an all-time classic heist thriller — and much more.
