1. We talked about genres when viewing Bad Day at Black Rock. How to identify a genre? Like the old joke says, "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and makes a noise like a duck, then it's a duck." The same with genres. If it looks like a Western, then it's a Western.
2. So right away you realize that the more you learn about cinema (genres, actors, etc.) the more information you get in every shot. Because Bad Day at Black Rock looks like a Western.
3. But wait a minute: Is Bad Day at Black Rock really a Western? Some things are missing: the gunfight, for example. But wait agan! There is a gunfight. Not quite the same way as other Westerns.
4. So, you see, the film "toys" with the Western genre. And this is part of the "richness" of the movie.
5. You might say the movie "toys" with the genre called War movie too (at the end, Spencer Tracy throws a gasoline bottle at the villain, like one would throw a grenade. (Remember, WWII has just ended and Spencer Tracy fought in that war and was saved by a Japanese-American soldier.) Is this part of that war? See how "meanings" accumulate as you watch a film. Later we're told the town looks like it's "all bombed out," another echo of a War movie.
6. Notice I said "Spencer Tracy," not the character's name. This shows the importance of the star in movies. Still, you should try to find out the names of all the characters. Names may carry meaning.
7. Imagine the movie without Spencer Tracy (once you get to know him). "Identification" might be equally shared between the bad and the good people. True, moral value in itself causes some identification, but probably not enough to "compel" identification. But a star with "compel" (force) identification. This saves the director time. Think about this: We could easily turn against Spencer Tracy's character for being so weak, even meek, in the beginning of the film. But that's impossible with Spencer Tracy himself. We don't care what he does. We are with him from the beginning of the movie. His point of view becomes our point of view.So the star system does not simply sell movies, it helps design movies too.
8. We talked about the letter-box format. See how much would be lost by pan-and-scan? All those compositions would be broken up. We would not be seeing the director's movie, but someone else's movies. Nowadays, directors have it written in their contracts that when their movies are released on DVD, they must be shown in letter-box format. (By the way, there's a pan-and-scan control on some DVD players, so you can compare the difference yourself!)
9. Consider the title of the movie. What if the movie were called Justice in a Small Town instead of Bad Day at Black Rock? See the difference a title makes. The second title suggests Western ideas.
10. This is also suggested by the framing (placement of camers, foregrounding rocks and hills).
11. The title music also suggests a Western.
12. Art direction (the dusty town, for example) suggests Westerns.
13. Costume design (cowboy hats, cowboy boots) suggests Westerns.
14. Generically (in terms of genres) the railroad has always been used as a symbol linking "civilization" (the American East) with the wilderness (both moral and geographical). John Ford uses the railroad like this in his Westerns: because the railroad always carries civilized values from the East to West. Before the railroad, law and order (from the East) would take a long time. After the RR, law and order could arrive fairly quickly. We studied the RR in terms of mise-en-scene and montage (editing of low angle shots of the RR, high angle shots of the RR, the RR penetrating the wilderness, like a powerful bullet, etc.). The RR, then, is both small and large, like Spencer Tracy himself.
15. The RR is especially emphasized in story and set design later on. How? Well, nobody allows Spencer to drive. (We see tires at the very beginning of the film, under the framed window we noticed in our viewing.) Of course Tracy gets a car from the young girl. But we feel that the "motor" is a threat in any form in this still and dusty town.
16. The movie is both a Western and not a Western. How so? Well, there's no real bad man in this film. There's just vicious men. Unlike Cowboy films, nobody risks anything here. They're just bullies. There are no gunfights, for example. A real good bad man (like Jack Palance in Shane) would be better than these cowardly bullies. These people are nobodies: losers only.
17. The movie follows Aristotle's "unity of time": it takes place in a single day, moving from day to night, which is symbolic of the descent into darkness and evil. The "coda" or tail end of the movie, of course, takes us back to a new symbolic day, with the remaining characters willing to change, as the train takes Spencer Tracy away again, from wherever he came. So the film ends on a note of hope.
18. Don't get too caught up in any single "meaning." Rather movies have a richness of meanings. For example, the young man (Pete, the brother of Liz) dressed in modern sytle (actually, the movie takes place just after WWII). This undercuts or "contradicts" the Western format. That's what I mean when I say, this is a Western, but not a Western (Westerns are usually dated by the closing of the Western frontier, in 1890, so roughly in the 19th century). Like I said, other factors also closed the "Western frontier" mentality (thinking, style of life, including the RR). Because once the RR arrived, the West was no longer that far from the East.
19. A good example of "framing" is when the Sheriff is seen inside his own jail. In fact, Tracy thinks he's a jailbird (criminal) and is about to lock him in. But even without that action, such framing would suggest that the Sheriff is in fact a jailbird, or that there is no real difference, in this dusty town, between good and evil (the Sheriff is confused with a jailbird).
20. The idea of a "dusty" town is further reinforced when we learn that the Japanese farmer managed to dig a well and obtain water. So values are reversed here: the white men are unable to change their own, while the Japanese can turn a wilderness into an oasis.
