01/08/2025
Happy New Year, movie fans. Our January Classic Movie, however, is anything but happy, happy. NO WAY OUT (1950) was a prestige release from 20th Century Fox. In places it is warm hearted, and action packed. It is also a good example of FILM Noir. But, mainly, NO WAY OUT is a so-called, "message movie," a picture dealing with a serious social problem of an era. In this case, the problem is racist bigotry. It is a brutal. no holds barred drama so intense that it was widely censored and not widely shown at all in the American South.
Sidney Poitier (in his first movie) stars as a new MD, the only Black person on a hospital staff. Richard Widmark co-stars as a hospital patient who is so crazy bigoted that two communities prepare for murder. NO WAY OUT was 20 years ahead of its time. The racial insults in the film are so horribly nasty and the action so brutal that the movie would never be produced today. NO WAY OUT is such a powerful drama of racial hatred that you will never forget it.
NO WAY OUT will be shown at 6:30 this coming Thursday, January 9, at the Edge Center Theater in Bigfork.
FREE TO ALL, but be warned. This movie can be disturbing.
