Act of Violence

Act of Violence is a 1949 American film noir starring Van Heflin, Robert Ryan and featuring Janet Leigh, Mary Astor and Phyllis Thaxter. Directed by Fred Zinnemann and adapted for the screen by Robert L. Richards from a story by Collier Young, the film confronts the ethics of war and was one of the first to address the problems of World War II veterans. Plot After surviving a Nazi POW camp where comrades were murdered by guards during an escape attempt, Frank Enley is respected for his fine character and good works in the small California town of Santa Lisa, where he, his young wife Edith and baby had settled after moving from the East. What his wife does not know is that Frank moved them in an attempt to escape the fall-out from events in that WWII prison camp. Frank has a nemesis, Joe Parkson, once his best friend, who lived through the ordeal and was left with a crippled leg. Unable to convince Joe to not make an escape attempt, Frank had alerted the SS Nazi camp commander to the prisoners' plan, taking the camp commandant at his word that he would "go easy" on the men. The prisoners were bayonetted and left to die, and only Joe survived by playing dead. Joe is now determined to exact justice on Frank, whose location he has learned from a newspaper story commending Enley for his civic endeavors. Joe's girlfriend, Ann Sturgess, knows everything about her man, but cannot dissuade him from his passion to right past wrongs by seeing Frank dead. Joe confronts Edith at their house and tells her the truth about Frank.