Sunday | November 8, 2015 5:00 pm

Act of Violence

Screening on Film

Directed by Fred Zinnemann.
With Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh.
US, 1948, 35mm, black & white, 82 min.
Print source: MGM

Robert Ryan is a dark, avenging angel hiding his clipped wings and pistol in his grimy trench coat in Fred Zinnemann’s fable of sunshine and noir set in a Los Angeles divided between bright new suburban developments and dingy, flophouse downtown. Van Heflin is the target of Ryan’s vengeful mission, a stammering real estate developer who hides a dark secret beneath his proud boostering of progress and prosperity. A little-known early work in Zinnemann’s career, Act of Violence offers a revealing critique of the sudden changes transforming and uprooting postwar USA.