The Black Hand (1950)

Unusually bleak for 1950s Hollywood rah-rah American films, “The Black Hand” opens in 1900’s Little Italy, New York, as a local attorney/doting father and husband is killed for daring to cross the Italian mob. The attorney’s teenage son -– a strapping with a thick Italian accent who could pass for young Brando -– vows revenge, and delivers eight years later after he returns to New York in the bodily form of 40-year-old Gene Kelly. A man as Italian as I am not. If you can get past that, this is a damn good film that takes head-on the disappointment of the American Dream for thousands of immigrants as they lived (and do still) under the thumb of petty thug dictators who hold more power and sway than the police or courts. There’s no “Singin’ in the Rain” here. In full dramatic mode singed with anger, Kelly pulls a knife on a guy for information and wields the dagger late in the film for more permanent deeds. Director Richard Thorpe (he later made “Jailhouse Rock”) makes the film feel authentic and lets Italians speak Italian for long periods, no subtitles, and takes the gritty, dark action to Naples. Seriously, Kelly is eccellente. A-