There is no telling what consequences will out when bearing the cross of something one of your parents did in your prenatal or early life as a child. This film touches upon this and hints at how tragedy and trauma can affect in a heartbreaking way the psychological development and disposition of the individual with more than one strike against them so to speak. You will probably recall how the promiscuity of Marilyn Monroe's mother and the actress not knowing who her real father was affected her life. She along with many others wondered whether or not there might be insanity in her blood. So since we cannot all be the progeny of doctors or lawyers or teachers or clergymen, you can imagine what a rough row you might have to hoe being the offspring of someone in a mental institution, or a fascistic warmonger or a career criminal.
Dane Clark as Danny Hawkins faces the difficult challenges of being born as his mother dies in labor and having his father hanged for murdering the doctor for not responding in ample time to his call. It is one thing to be born to cruel and repressive parents. It is another thing to be born to parents who are poverty stricken. But I think you would agree that persons born into the world with no surviving parents at all have the proverbial two strikes against them. This is the case For Danny Hawkins, whose father is not a bank president or leading social lion, but an executed murderer who swung at the end of a hangman's noose.
The stigma of this hereditary and family legacy makes Danny as a young boy the unwanted target of much taunting and bullying from the other kids. The direction of Frank Borzage has him in the shadows a lot with his head down in shame. Lloyd Bridges as Jerry Sykes has grown up using Danny as a dump for his abuse and also now and then as his personal punching bag. This is just another one of those times in the woods with the haunted young man fighting back as best he knows how. Fortunately or unfortnately for him, he somehow gets the best of Jerry this time and accidentally kills him in self defense.
At this point, it appears that his inheritance of violence from his father's side has finally caught up with him. He has become what his schoolmates have harassed him into believing would be his fate. A murderer's son good for nothing but murder. The performance of Clark effectively conveys the pent up state of an individual who feels trapped by his background, and fighting and seeking for any way out. The rest of the film after this has tinges of Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1866) to it, with Ally Joslyn as Sheriff Clem Otis, playing the poor man's Porfiry Petrovich to Danny's Raskolnikov. There are two scenes where Danny really wigs out in a melodramatic way, and you wonder why anybody hasn't harbored suspicions about him sooner.
An intriguing scene is when Danny returns to the school dance after unexpectedly doing away with Jerry and leaving his corpse in the woods. Jerry's girl friend Gilly Johnson is now responsive to Danny's advances, even as she wonders where Jerry is at this moment. Knowing nothing of what Danny has done, she finds him even stranger and more distant than usual, but somehow even more vulnerable and needful of companionship. Danny is seething with his secret, but attempts to act as though nothing untoward has happened recently. He shares confidences with no one until coming to hide out at the swampy residence of Mose Jackson, as played with the warm moral authority of the great Rex Ingram.
Throughout the course of the story we see Harry Morgan in a surprising turn as Billy Scripture, a friendly, harmless mute who discovers and shows Danny his pocket knife left at the murder scene. A panicked Danny nearly winds up strangling Billy to keep him from revealing what he did not suspect or even knew. It all starts to come out in the wash at last when he meets with Ethel Barrymore as Grandma, and she reveals parallels between his emotional state and that of his father after his crime. Speaking with her, Danny spies a glimmer of hope and a possible path out of his haunted past that might indeed prove redemptive.
There is definitely something noirish about the beginning of the film. The cinematography of John L. Russell allied to the editing of Harry Keller keep your attention rooted to the story. The visual language of the film is stark and suspenseful, as the main character seems always on the verge of tipping over the whole apple cart. You are with Danny Hawkins from the start to the finish, hoping against hope that somehow history won't repeat itself. We have seen the odds stacked against him from the cradle, but can't help but hope that he will somehow still find a way to create his own life.
Dane Clark as Danny Hawkins faces the difficult challenges of being born as his mother dies in labor and having his father hanged for murdering the doctor for not responding in ample time to his call. It is one thing to be born to cruel and repressive parents. It is another thing to be born to parents who are poverty stricken. But I think you would agree that persons born into the world with no surviving parents at all have the proverbial two strikes against them. This is the case For Danny Hawkins, whose father is not a bank president or leading social lion, but an executed murderer who swung at the end of a hangman's noose.
The stigma of this hereditary and family legacy makes Danny as a young boy the unwanted target of much taunting and bullying from the other kids. The direction of Frank Borzage has him in the shadows a lot with his head down in shame. Lloyd Bridges as Jerry Sykes has grown up using Danny as a dump for his abuse and also now and then as his personal punching bag. This is just another one of those times in the woods with the haunted young man fighting back as best he knows how. Fortunately or unfortnately for him, he somehow gets the best of Jerry this time and accidentally kills him in self defense.
At this point, it appears that his inheritance of violence from his father's side has finally caught up with him. He has become what his schoolmates have harassed him into believing would be his fate. A murderer's son good for nothing but murder. The performance of Clark effectively conveys the pent up state of an individual who feels trapped by his background, and fighting and seeking for any way out. The rest of the film after this has tinges of Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (1866) to it, with Ally Joslyn as Sheriff Clem Otis, playing the poor man's Porfiry Petrovich to Danny's Raskolnikov. There are two scenes where Danny really wigs out in a melodramatic way, and you wonder why anybody hasn't harbored suspicions about him sooner.
An intriguing scene is when Danny returns to the school dance after unexpectedly doing away with Jerry and leaving his corpse in the woods. Jerry's girl friend Gilly Johnson is now responsive to Danny's advances, even as she wonders where Jerry is at this moment. Knowing nothing of what Danny has done, she finds him even stranger and more distant than usual, but somehow even more vulnerable and needful of companionship. Danny is seething with his secret, but attempts to act as though nothing untoward has happened recently. He shares confidences with no one until coming to hide out at the swampy residence of Mose Jackson, as played with the warm moral authority of the great Rex Ingram.
Throughout the course of the story we see Harry Morgan in a surprising turn as Billy Scripture, a friendly, harmless mute who discovers and shows Danny his pocket knife left at the murder scene. A panicked Danny nearly winds up strangling Billy to keep him from revealing what he did not suspect or even knew. It all starts to come out in the wash at last when he meets with Ethel Barrymore as Grandma, and she reveals parallels between his emotional state and that of his father after his crime. Speaking with her, Danny spies a glimmer of hope and a possible path out of his haunted past that might indeed prove redemptive.
There is definitely something noirish about the beginning of the film. The cinematography of John L. Russell allied to the editing of Harry Keller keep your attention rooted to the story. The visual language of the film is stark and suspenseful, as the main character seems always on the verge of tipping over the whole apple cart. You are with Danny Hawkins from the start to the finish, hoping against hope that somehow history won't repeat itself. We have seen the odds stacked against him from the cradle, but can't help but hope that he will somehow still find a way to create his own life.