Ruthless (1948)
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Film Review

Ruthless is perhaps the unlikeliest film to come out in late 1940s America, a country gripped by anti-Communist paranoia.  A flagrant assault on capitalism, it is a film that dared to pour scorn on the American dream by showing the downside of a free-market, winner-takes-all economy.  The film was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, an Austrian émigré who had previously distinguished himself at Universal Pictures with such films as The Black Cat (1934), his best-known work.  A romantic indiscretion with the wife of the nephew of Universal's top honcho Carl Laemmle resulted in Ulmer being blacklisted from the main Hollywood studios and much of his subsequent work is, consequently, of little interest.  Ruthless is an exception, a slick film noir that portrays capitalism as a modern social evil, practically akin to Fascism of the 1930s.

The central character, a driven money man named Horace Vendig, is every inch the Nietzschen superman; his pursuit of wealth makes him totally blind to the things that really matter in life: the loyalties we owe to others and our wider social responsibilities.  Ruthless is the closest that Hollywood ever got to making an outright riposte to McCarthyism, at a time when its leading lights were being dragged before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to answer questions on suspected Communist activity.  Today, the film has perhaps an even greater resonance, as we can readily identify the main character with the money-obsessed individuals who very nearly wrecked the world banking system in 2008.

As well-cast as the lead roles are - Zachary Scott is an admirable choice for the part of the central villain of the piece, odious and yet strangely likeable at the same time - it is the supporting cast that gives the film most of its charm and colour.  Diana Lynn brings an angelic innocence to her character which immediately establishes Vendig as a rotter of the first order.  Lucille Bremer makes a more sensual femme fatale, and it is heartbreaking to see her end up as yet another broken rung in Vendig's social climbing ladder.  Dennis Hoey, famous for his portrayal of Inspector Lestrade films in Universal's Sherlock Holmes films of the 1940s, puts in a respectable character turn as the benevolent family man who adopts Vendig, and Raymond Burr is as far from Perry Mason as you can imagine as Vendig's washed-up natural father.

The most enjoyable, most intense and most nuanced performance is provided by Sydney Greenstreet - this was one of his last screen roles and he puts everything he has into it to become a formidable avenging angel against the worst excesses of capitalism.  Greenstreet's final confrontation with Scott is as dramatic as any shoot-out in a classic western, and yet it also provides a potent reminder of the sickness that lies at the heart of the capitalist system, where an individual's right to pursue happiness and prosperity for himself inevitably comes at the expense of someone else.

Film Synopsis

When he saves his well-to-do neighbours' daughter from drowning, pre-teen Horace Vendig soon has his first opportunity to move up the social ladder.  Leaving his widowed mother, he allows his neighbours to become his adopted parents, and through their kindness he wins a place at university.  Horace then receives another stroke of good fortune when he meets a successful financier.  Abandoning his studies, and the girl he had promised to marry in his home town, he sets himself up as a stock broker and within no time he is richer than he dared to imagine.  Still this success does not satisfy him, and if he must betray the ones who trusted him and supported him in the past, so be it...