(1941)
Bruce Eder
Among the Living was as neat a little B-thriller as Paramount ever made, thanks to the brisk direction by Stuart Heisler, a crackerjack script by Lester Cole, Garrett Fort, and Brian Marlow, and a brace of generally fine performances led by Albert Dekker, who successfully pulls off a dual-role performance. Dekker's years of stage work pays off here, as he does, indeed, create the dramatic illusion of two different people. In John Raden, he effectively portrays a decent, thoughtful, but perhaps slightly superficial man who is suddenly forced to come to grips with the unpleasant truths about his family that he has successfully avoided and evaded for most of his life. And in Paul Raden, he manages to create a portrayal that is frightening -- yet also sympathetic at times -- in a man driven by inner demons not entirely his responsibility. Add to that the work of Harry Carey Sr., in one of the more unusual and complex roles of his career, as a decent man whose one Faustian bargain suddenly threatens to destroy all of the good that he has done; Susan Hayward as a venal young woman, driven entirely by her lusts and desires; and even Jean Phillips in a small, memorable role as a tavern floozy, plus fine little supporting performances by Maude Eburne and Gordon Jones, and the result is a movie that's every bit as entertaining to watch as any of Val Lewton's atmospheric horror films at RKO, yet which also carries with it a topical, sociological component. It wasn't that many years before Among the Living was made that there was an actual lynching in San Diego, or that riots of the type shown here had broken out in various locales around the United States in the '20s and '30s. Additionally, Heisler and company successfully evoke the impression of a seedy factory town, still stricken by the Great Depression and suffering from all of the ills inherent in the "downside" of capitalism. Indeed, there's little that separates the depiction of small-town life in this movie from the vision of Pottersville in the last section of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, made five years later, except that Among the Living doesn't have a George Bailey or any guardian angels to help set things right. It ends up a wonderfully rich, albeit tragedy-laden movie, crawling with psychological demons that probably resonate better in the 21st century than they did in 1941, mostly thanks to a great lead performance. The only disappointment for modern viewers will be how relatively little Frances Farmer has to do in the movie, as John Raden's wife.
Among the Living on AllMovie
Among the Living (1941)
