Deported (US 1950)

Deported, part of Indicator’s box-set of ‘Universal Noirs’ Vol 1., is not what I expected. I vaguely assumed it would be similar to Anthony Mann’s Border Incident (1949), perhaps because of the well-known folk song ‘Deportee’ by Woody Guthrie (1948). In fact it has nothing to do with Mexican migrant workers but everything to do with American-Italian relations in the late 1940s. Why it might turn up in a collection of films noirs is another story.

The deportee in question here is ‘Vic Smith’ or Vittorio Sparducci. The character is possibly based on/inspired by the real-life figure of Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano who was deported back to Italy in 1946 and about whom several films have been made, including Francesco Rosi’s Lucky Luciano (Italy-France-US 1973) with Gian Maria Volontè as Luciano. American films in 1950 couldn’t use the name of real criminals. In this case the script was by the Canadian writer Lionel Shapiro who adapted his story ‘Paradise Lost ’49’ with producer Robert Buckner. Vic Smith (Jeff Chandler) is seen in the opening sequence disembarking in Naples and being met by American and Italian officials. The Italian official Bucelli (played by Claude Dauphin, the prolific French actor in many roles across French, Italian and US films) tells Smith he must spend a minimum of 30 days with his remaining family in Marbella, a (fictional?) small town in Siena, Tuscany. Bucelli has a ‘nose’ for criminal activity and is sure Smith will be up to something, especially as he has been in prison for five years after stealing $100,000 which the US authorities have been unable to find. But before he gets to Siena, Smith meets an attractive young woman (Marina Berti) who in turn leads him to the one person he doesn’t want to see, his ex-partner Bernardo (Richard Rober). Smith escapes from this pair but is now aware of the difficulties he faces in Italy.

Once in Siena, Smith is invited to live in his uncle’s house above his bakery. Soon he manages to engineer a meeting with Countess Christina di Lorenzi (Märta Torén). A beautiful young widow of five years, the Countess is acting as an organiser of food relief for Marbella’s residents. Food is in short supply in Italy and the black market is making a killing. Vic Smith attempts to seduce Christina while also planning to use her position in his plans to get his funds into Italy. Will Vic fall for Christina? Will she fall for him? Will he still get his money?

As a narrative, this is enjoyable and engaging. But there are more interesting questions about this production. The director is Robert Siodmak, one of the most prolific of the Jewish émigré directors in Hollywood and one of the most identified with what are now thought of as ‘classic films noirs‘, e.g Phantom Lady (US 1944), The Spiral Staircase (US 1946), The Killers (US 1946) and four or five more. In the booklet accompanying the box-set, Sergio Angelini suggests that Siodmak was becoming concerned by the pressure on directors from the anti-communist drives in Hollywood and the prospect of blacklists. This film was the first of several projects which hired him to work on productions in Europe which would soon become home to several significant Hollywood directors. Apart from one independent production in the US, the rest of Siodmak’s career would be in Europe. Deported might also be seen in two other contexts. First, it was an early example of what became known as a ‘runaway production’ – a Hollywood film made in Europe or elsewhere which offered more freedom and lower costs. In 1950, the biggest project in Italy was the Hollywood production of Quo Vadis (1951) the MGM epic that took over Cinecittà in Rome. Although Deported used both Cinecittà and the Universal backlot for studio scenes, most of the shoot was on location in Naples and Tuscany. This points to the other trend in Hollywood since 1945 – the drive towards location shooting. This was evident in the development of the ‘semi-documentary’ films, both crime and social issue based. It was associated with producers like Mark Hellinger and Louis de Rochemont. Hellinger died in 1947 but his last film was The Naked City (1948) filmed on location on the streets of New York for Universal-International.

The idea of a film set on location also brought up the question of Italian neo-realism which had been making an impact on the Hollywood film community ever since Rossellini’s Rome, Open City had been shown in Los Angeles in 1948. Ingrid Bergman saw that film and then Paisà (Italy 1946) which convinced her she needed to work with Rossellini. She shocked Hollywood by making Stromboli in 1950 with Rossellini and giving birth to their child. Also in the booklet accompanying the box-set of Universal noirs, there is a reference to a newspaper report on how Robert Siodmak effectively took over a village in Tuscany for 15 hours continuous shooting with many of the locals as extras. He couldn’t do that in Hollywood because of union restrictions. The extras cost very little in terms of pay rates. At this time the Americans in Italy were still very popular as they had been since the Allies arrived in Sicily in 1943. American GIs were of course much better paid than the British, French or other Allied troops. This is picked up in the opening sequence of Deported when Smith, as his ship docks throws dollar bills down towards the young boys who dive in the into the sea to retrieve them. He will repeat this trick later in the film and be reprimanded by the Countess who tries to share any bounty among all the local children and families.

The irony of Hollywood in Italy – what would later be termed ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ – is that the Italian Communist Party was very active at this time and worked alongside the Socialist Party vying for power with the right-wing Christian Democrats. The right remained in power centrally but the Left parties were strong in certain regions and especially in North-Central Italy. American interest in Italy was partly to help prevent the Communist Party getting control of the national government as the Cold War developed. This was one of the issues underpinning the Marshall Plan from 1948 – direct American economic support for Western European economies. This becomes an indirect reference in the plot of Deported and the excitement generated by a visiting American like Vic Smith. Finally, we can link the events in Deported to that other main feature of post-war Europe, the ‘black market’ in both food and medical supplies (e.g. in The Third Man, 1949).

I’m not sure if any of these political questions would have been important for US audiences in 1950, but they stand out in retrospect. I suspect far more important was the overall production quality of the film. At this point Universal-International was still trying to make slightly bigger budget films, part of the studio’s post 1945 strategy. One suggestion is that this film might have had a budget of around $1 million (Angelini). Another source suggests that the Italian shoot, using ‘frozen’ Universal income in Italy, was far less expensive than expected but Chandler had to be back in Hollywood and the US studio shoots racked up more expensive time. The crew appears to have been almost entirely American with William Daniels as cinematographer. With a running time of 89 minutes Deported appears to have been an intended A feature, even though its two leading players were not really A list stars. Märta Torén was a Swedish beauty, dubbed “the next Bergman” when she signed a contract at Universal. She quickly moved up to female lead by her second picture, but this put her up against James Mason (not yet a major star in Hollywood), Dick Powell and Howard Duff. Things didn’t work out for Torén who died young from a brain haemorrhage aged only 30 in 1957. Jeff Chandler, who appeared down the cast list in one of Torén’s earlier films did make a big splash in 1950 in Broken Arrow, playing Cochise, a role which gained him an Oscar nomination in 1951. Thereafter he was primarily a leading player in Westerns but also died comparatively young at 42 in 1961. There is a suggestion that the picture was originally planned with Dana Andrews in the lead. Andrews had been in Sword of the Desert (1949) a film set in Palestine about smuggling in Jewish migrants produced by Robert Buckner. This was the film which also featured Torén and Chandler.

But why has Deported been classified as a film noir? On his blog ‘The Film Noir Board’ Eric Somer makes a strong argument for the characters in the film as typical of noir and the idea of the central character with two names and two potential personae. He argues Vic can no longer return to his role as a gang leader but neither can he enter the more humanistic world of the Countess or his own uncle. I’m a little less sure about the argument that the corrupt American way of doing things and how this is forced on the world is an aspect of noir. I think it’s actually an aspect of a different kind of film. In visual terms, only the last sequence, shot on a studio lot is typical of film noir staging, lighting etc.

William Daniels’ cinematography and Siodmak’s direction are very good and a match for much of the neo-realist work in Italy. I think that really this is an enjoyable ‘social film’ jazzed up for the American market with a crime element. It would be interesting to see this film in a double bill, paired with Bienvenido Mister Marshall (Spain 1953), the satirical film on American aid in Europe from Luis García Berlanga.