Friday | August 21, 2009 9:15 pm

Boomerang!

Screening on Film

Directed by Elia Kazan.
With Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb.
US, 1947, 35mm, black & white, 88 min.
Print source: UCLA

Kazan developed this engrossing policier—based on an actual unsolved crime, the murder of a Connecticut priest—with Louis de Rochemont, inventor of the semi-documentary form so successful at Fox after WWII. While Boomerang! adheres to central tenets of the semi-documentary (location shooting, notable use of nonprofessional extras, detached voiceover commentary), the film also hones in on the figure of the crusading District Attorney, played with signature virile nonchalance by Dana Andrews, to create a gripping moral and epistemological puzzle about the ineluctability of truth and the dangers of cold, hard facts.