User Reviews

While noir movies are already one of my favorites types of film, it is greatly appreciated when the plot of one concerns itself with world war 2 or its immediate aftermath. The Glass Wall is one such movie, and thankfully the storyline is not that complicated to follow, unlike many others in this genre. In this tense and exciting production, Vittorio Gassman plays Peter, a former concentration camp inmate from Hungary who saved an American paratrooper's life during the second world war. Because Peter has no passport, he is not allowed into the United States. The immigration officials on his ship care little for his compelling story about how he was tortured by the nazis. Peter wants the officials to search for his paratrooper friend, who now lives in New York, but Peter only knows his first name; Tom. Nothing else is known about him other than he has a job playing in a jazz band. Meanwhile, Peter is not willing to be deported back to Hungary, by now a socialist state under the jackboot of Soviet Russia. He leaps off the ship and injures his rib cage, and later comes across a woman in a diner trying to steal a coat just to survive. Her name is Maggie (Gloria Grahame), and she allows Peter to travel to her apartment after he saves her from being arrested. Shortly after, Maggie's annoying landlord Mrs. Hinckley comes to the door asking for money, and her brutish son searches the room. After he comes across Peter and has a fight with him, Maggie and Peter rush out while Hinckley's son calls the police. Peter is now wanted all over the city because he is not a legal citizen. As it turns out, Tom has been paying attention to all this nonsense involving the man who saved him back in ww2. He sees his picture in the paper and decides he must do whatever he can to prevent him from being arrested. Tom manages to lend credence to Peter's story (thought to be untrue earlier) about how he was stabbed in the shoulder with a German bayonet during the war. Early in the movie, Peter says he has a mark on his shoulder. Now realizing Peter was telling the truth, the authorities try to find him, but they have to do so before 7, or else he will be forced out of America permanently. Eventually, Peter is taken in by a fellow hungarian named Tanya, but he leaves her house voluntarily after his backstory is revealed to Tanya's argumentative brother. Finally, Peter decides his last safe place to be is the United Nations Headquarters, with its distinctive glass exterior. Once inside, he is chased by the police who want to save him, but he mistakes their efforts for an arrest attempt. Making it to the roof, Peter prepares to kill himself, but falls backward when he hears the voice of the soldier he once saved. With Tom able to verify Peter's story, he can now live in America. This is another excellent and straightforward movie from the 1950s. It doesn't have the most complicated story, but that's how I like it the most, as complex movies are painful to explain to someone who hasn't watched them. I thought Gloria Grahame's character was a welcome change from how girls are usually shown to be in noirs, since she actually has a bad side herself. The first we see of her, she's stealing somebody's jacket, and later, she steals money from a bunch of kids to pay back Peter. It's nice to see a woman who is complicit in the protagonist's crimes. Overall, this movie is decent even if the ending was a little wimpy because it could have just as easily concluded with Peter killing himself, but the producers didn't want to make the audience upset. Because the main character is a concentration camp survivor, this is understandable.

Vittorio Gassman is a stowaway on a ship bound for America. He is found and told he has to go back to his country, but he won't do it. There is a way for him to enter the country legally, but corroborating testimony of his aiding a U.S. soldier is needed and they won't let him get it. As soon as the ship gets to the New York harbor and he gets a chance, he jumps ship, but not before he is shot in the process. Therefore, his situation is even more dire; it's a race with time, for him to find his friend. He befriends Gloria Grahame, who is in a bad way herself, with little to no money to pay her rent and is on the verge of being thrown out. We see her eat someone's left-over dough-nut and trying to steal an overcoat, probably to hawk it. But the owner runs after her. Through this altercation, our hero, who was nearby, meets her. The film is very effective at making the viewers feel for the foreigner and his plight, as he is only one of many who leave their homeland for America and who sees a new beginning with hope for a better day there. But once there he feels lost and overwhelmed, because of his wound and being discouraged about finding his friend. After the first hour though, the film tends to rely too much on predictable plot complications and clichés, and the last half hour drags. But of course he can't find his friend, until the last possible second! The film's strength mainly is in the human experience and the individual story, as we see a young lady, in a girlie show, making money as only she can and takes him in, because she feels sorry for him. When her brother wants to turn him away, (he's just another dumb foreigner), their mother says, your father was once a dumb foreigner. It's moments like this that make the film worth watching, but it does tend to get a bit preachy, when he arrives at the U.N. building and he spouts off to an empty room, and by the time the movie's over, you feel wore out yourself. "The Glass Wall" is probably a curiosity piece in the career of Gloria Grahame (as this is found on a Bad Girls of Film Noir DVD set,) but the film belongs to Vittorio Gassman. In that context, someone buying the set may be disappointed, but I think it basically is a very ambitious yet not completely successful little film about America being the world of tomorrow for many.

Well done, well shot, well acted. Dated. But the irony - if that's the right way of describing it - of the UN would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

Vittorio Gassman is a displaced person who stows away on a ship to America. Immigration quizzes him. Gassman has no family, has spent most of the war in concentration camps, and is entitled to legal status as a DP because he saved the life of an American paratrooper, Jerry Paris. Alas, he doesn't know Paris's address in New York, or even his last name. All he knows is that Paris is a clarinetist who works somewhere around Times Square.

Determined to find his war-time pal and stay in the USA, Gassman escapes, breaking some ribs in the process, and hies over to Times Square. He's got forty-eight hours before he becomes a federal fugitive and will be denied entry on those grounds.

Neat title, a pun. The "glass wall" is, at the same time, the strict rules that prevent Gassman from entering the country, and the facade of the United Nations building that represents justice and is where the pursuit finds its climax.

In "Odd Man Out," James Mason found himself in a similar situation -- wounded and wandering around the city, bumping into diverse sorts of citizens. But "Odd Man Out" is a far more complex and subtle film than "The Glass Wall".

Here, the structure and dynamics are pretty simple. For the first half of the movie, Gassman is a fugitive wanted by the law. Then his claim to legal status is confirmed by the appearance of his buddy Paris, and for the rest of the film the police, aided by Paris and by a new friend, Gloria Grahame, try to find him before his forty-eight hours are up. Along the way, Gassman meets nice people, bad people, and indifferent people.

Not knowing his salvation is at hand, Gassman runs into the UN building, makes a Big Speech about "freedom" in an empty chamber, takes an elevator to the roof, and is about to jump off before he collapses from pain and exhaustion.

It gets a bit tiresome, seeing Gassman stumbling along the city's streets, holding his ribs, slumping against walls, catching a nap in an empty cab. Gassman himself seems to use only one expression, best described as "wounded". (He was pretty good in a comic role in "Big Deal on Madonna Street.") Gloria Grahame looks right for the part, though she is always Gloria Grahame.

There's a good deal of effort put into making this a message movie. Taken in by a Hungarian family, an argument erupts between the sly boots son who wants to turn Gassman over to the cops and his mother, one of those generous, proud, old peasant women, who slaps her son across the face and reminds him that "your fodder too was an immigrant." As in the rest of the second half, the scene is ironic because, in protecting Gassman, they are also hindering the efforts of his friends to legitimize his status.

There are a couple of weaknesses in the plot. When the exotic dancer finds Gassman asleep in her cab and recognizes him, she whispers to the driver to take her, not home, as usual, but to the police station. With Gassman still corking off, she goes into the station and emerges a few minutes later, now ready for the two of them to be taken to her home. Why did she go to the police station? Nice night club scene involving Jack Teagarden and Shorty Rogers, the latter an icon of 1950s West Coast jazz. Aficionados may recognize, or THINK they recognize, some of the members of the band.

On the whole, though, there's nothing especially gripping about the story. Of course one feels sorry for Gassman, who has been through hell and come out the other side as still a gentleman, but the direction is plodding, there is little sparkle to the dialog, and it looks very much like an earnest message movie. But if you want a wounded fugitive wandering the streets, try "Odd Man Out." If you want a message movie that enthralls, try "On the Waterfront."