He Ran All the Way

John Garfield plays a tormented, desperate, and volatile fugitive in John Berry’s He Ran All the Way, which ends [spoiler alert] with an iconic shot of his character dead in the gutter, an image particularly heartbreaking as this was the brilliant actor’s final film performance before his tragic death at 39 years old caused in part by the emotional stress of his ejection from Hollywood for his ties to the Communist party (a fate also suffered by director Berry). [spoiler ends] Having killed a cop while fleeing the scene of a robbery, Nick Robey (Garfield) meets pretty Peg Dobbs (Shelley Winters) at a public pool where he’s trying to “stick to the crowd” to avoid the police. After walking Peg home and meeting her family, Nick makes himself at home and spends the evening getting to know her, but his paranoia intensifies with every siren he hears until he finally takes the family hostage. Perhaps suffering a case of Stockholm Syndrome, Peg still manages to fall in love with Nick during the long ordeal but her feelings will be put to the ultimate test when forced to choose between Nick or her father (Wallace Ford). Berry creates a gritty, grimy ambience to the neighborhood, exposing Nick’s own unstable family background as a contributor to his manic behavior (“If you were a man, I’d kick your teeth in,” he tells his own mother) while Francis Lyon’s dynamic editing and cinematographer James Wong Howe’s extensive use of low angles, close-ups, and deep focus add a natural chaos to the film even when long stretches are spent in the family’s apartment. Playing equal parts naive and self-possessed, Winters gives us a charming and sympathetic character even when she’s making dumb decisions and seeking approval from an obvious sociopath (“I wish I knew how you wanted me to be”).