The Young Savages

When Shelley Winters was TCM's Star of the Month back in November, one of her movies that I hadn't had the chance to blog about yet showed up, The Young Savages. So I DVRed it to watch later and do a post on it.

The movie starts off promisingly, with three adolescents walking through slum-like streets somewhere in New York, until they come upon a particular person, and stab him to death. The three young men give their knives to somebody to dispose of, and run off with the police chasing after them. The police eventually catch up fairly quickly and arrest the three.

Those three are members of an Italian-American gang, the Thunderbirds: Arthur Reardon (John Davis Chandler) was the leader of the three, "Batman" Aposto (Neil Nephew) his right-hand man, and Danny di Pace (Stanley Kristien). Their target was just a boy, and a blind one at that, Puerto Rican Roberto Escalante. His mother (Vivian Nathan) wants justice, but unsurprisingly doesn't think she's going to get it.

The Manhattan District Attorney, Dan Cole (Edward Andrews) wants the death penalty, because he's running for Governor, and needs a tough-on-crime approach to get the votes he needs. This is tough, in that one of the three accused is only 15 and so not supposed to be tried as an adult. Also, he's not going to prosecute the case directly, instead giving it to his assistant DA, Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster), who grew up in the sort of slums where both the Thunderbirds and the dead boy live, but who escaped to become a lawyer with a wife Karin (Dina Merrill) and daughter about the age of the three accused.

To be honest, however, Hank probably ought to recuse himself from the case. Danny di Pace is the son of one Mary di Pace (Shelley Winters), who was the girlfriend of Hank many years ago, before either of them got married and started a family. Mary's husband up and left them, but she's convinced that Danny is a good kid who would never get involved in a stabbing like this.

Hank investigates, and it turns out that there's a lot going on. In addition to the Thunderbirds, there's a Puerto Rican gang, the Horseheads, that have gotten into it with the Thunderbirds, and you get the impression that the two gangs would be perfectly fine just being left alone to mete out their own brand of justice on each other, with the big problem being that innocent bystanders get caught in the crossfire.

Also, little Roberto may not have been innocent. One of the Thunderbirds claims that he was helping the Horseheads by gathering up all of their knives after a rumble between the two gangs. That way, none of the Horseheads would have any weapons on them, and who would suspect a blind boy of being armed when he can't see what he's aiming at? Also, Roberto's older sister supposedly turned to prostitution to make the family's ends meet, and Roberto may have known.

Also, both gangs have it in for Hank. Hank was originally born Bellini, and there are apparently people who feel he left them behind. The Puerto Ricans think that by trying to get to the truth, Hank is really trying to get the Italians off. And Karin thinks executing these three kids isn't going to solve society's problems. Dan or Hank should flip the switch on the chair themselves. To make matters worse, a couple of gang memebers accost Karin in the elevator in their apartment building, while later, other gang members assault Hank on the subway, because why would an ADA not just drive his own car or be driven around? Eventually we get to the trial and a resolution of some sort.

As I said at the beginning, The Young Savages starts off promisingly enough. John Frankenheimer directed, the first of four movies he made with Lancaster, as he would go on to mention in the Star of the Month piece on Lancaster that he narrated. Frankenheimer uses some camera angles that Hollywood wasn't really using at the time and which look nice even if they don't add much to the narrative.

And it's in the narrative that the movie ultimately displays the weaknesses it has. The producers and writers were obviously trying to make something hard-hitting and with biting social commentary, but what we get by the time to case goes to trial feels more like an afterschool special with implausible motivations and emotional reactions. The trial didn't seem particularly authentic to me, either.

On the plus side, the performances are about as good as you can expect given the script, while there's a lot of New York location shooting, which is nice to see how the city looked and functioned 60 years ago. But that doesn't completely mask the flaws in the film's third act.

The Young Savages does seem to be available both on DVD and via streaming video.