Tonight's Movie: The Hard Way (1943) - A Warner Archive Blu-ray Review

The classic Warner Bros. show business melodrama THE HARD WAY (1943) is now available on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection.

The Warner Archive previously released the movie on DVD back in 2009, the first year the company was in business.

THE HARD WAY is a film which has certainly stood the test of time for me since I first saw it in 2008.

It's a tough film which is also more than a little depressing, with not one but two characters choosing to end their lives; I'd add this was rather shocking given the Production Code. As I wrote in 2008, the movie has "a bleak, noirish overtone and a body count to go with it."

At the same time, the story is so well told by its superb cast that I find myself returning to it every few years for yet another look.

The film concerns Helen Chernen (Ida Lupino), who has raised her little sister Katherine, aka Katie (Joan Leslie) in a grimy industrial town.

Helen's husband (Roman Bohnen) saying they can't afford to give Katie a new dress for her high school graduation is the last straw for Helen, who's determined to get Katie -- and herself -- out of what she sees as a dead-end life.

Helen spots an opportunity to exit town with a vaudeville team when one of the partners, Albert (Jack Carson), falls for young Katie.

They're immediately on their way, with Helen plotting every step of Katie's growing career, while Albert's cynical partner Paul (Dennis Morgan) comments from the sidelines.

The acting is uniformly excellent, whether it's the lead quartet of actors or the supporting cast; many actors with brief screen time nevertheless sketch memorable characters. Two of my favorites are Faye Emerson as an ice cream parlor waitress and Julie Bishop as a chorus member, both of whom date Paul.

I broke down the plot and characters in significant detail in my 2008 review and invite readers to click over to that piece for more analysis and then return here for some additional thoughts.

I'll add to my previous review of the film that with each viewing I'm more impressed with the performance of Joan Leslie and photography of James Wong Howe.

In the early scenes Leslie, photographed by Howe wearing little makeup, conveys a kid so young that it's almost shocking Helen engineers her into marriage. Katie is infatuated with Albert and it was common then for girls to marry right out of high school, but the audience realizes that Helen may have prematurely sacrificed her sister's innocence for their financial gain.

Katie could well have made a go of the marriage, as her husband (movingly portrayed by Jack Carson) adores her, but again Helen gets in the way. To an extent Katie is complicit, but she is young and under the sway of her older sister.

Good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, as she is at various points in this movie, Ida Lupino is always fascinating to watch, and this film is no exception.

THE HARD WAY was directed by Vincent Sherman. It was written by Daniel Fuchs and Peter Viertel from a story by Jerry Wald. The movie runs 109 well-paced minutes.

The Blu-ray print is from a 1080p HD master of a 4K scan of the original nitrate camera negative. It looks and sounds very good, with a nice black and white picture and no distracting skips or jumps. Sound quality is excellent.

There are a number of extras, the most significant of which is a 1944 Lux Radio Theater production of the story with a fascinating cast: Miriam Hopkins, Franchot Tone, Chester Morris, and Anne Baxter.

The disc also contains the trailer; the eight-minute cartoons THE ARISTOCAT (1943) and SLAP HAPPY DAFFY (1943); and a pair of shorts, GUN TO GUN (1943) with Robert Shayne and Lupita Tovar, directed by D. Ross Lederman, and OVER THE WALL (1944) with Dane Clark and Tom Tully, directed by Jean Negulesco.

This is a worthy disc presentation of a very good movie. Fans of Warner Bros. dramas and the cast, not to mention old-time radio, will definitely want to add it to their library.

Related posts: My 2008 review; a photo gallery I created after seeing the movie at UCLA in 2018; and a 2018 post with photos of the Warner Bros. backlot, which includes a couple key locations for the movie.

Thanks to the Warner Archive for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray. Warner Archive Blu-rays may be ordered from Movie Zyng, Amazon, and other online retailers.

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