To those interested in cinema, as well as social and political history, the name of Edward Dmytryk, who has died aged 90, means two things: a prolific director, responsible for at least one minor masterpiece, and several other superb, low-budget movies. Also, and less happily, his membership of the Hollywood 10, for which he was jailed for six months and nearly lost a career, then at its height. But his career spanned seven decades, and those 1940s highlights deserve to be seen in the context of a life that began in great hardship and ended with a distinguished career as a writer and teacher of film.
Dmytryk was born in Canada to Ukrainian emigrés, who moved to Los Angeles, in 1919. Three years later, Eddie fled the abusive household for Chicago, but soon headed back to California, if not to his family. Aged 15, he entered the film industry as a messenger boy, becoming a projectionist, assistant editor and finally, editor. An attempt at completing his education at the Californian Institute of Technology lasted only a year. He was soon back at the studios working for directors as eminent as George Cukor, Leo McCarey and Henry Hathaway. His editing included the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.
He made his directorial debut with Television Spy (1939) and completed his long training period with a series of B-movies. But after three or four films a year, he became frustrated by the seemingly endless grind of directing, and by an unhappy marriage.
Another series film, The Falcon Strikes Back (1943), followed, and then his luck turned; he was asked to take over direction - from Irving Reis - of a bizarre project entitled Hitler's Children, a hectoring, anti-fascist movie which became the first of Dmytryk's works to reflect his passionate leftwing views. The film proved an unlikely success and he was later to make strongly anti-Japanese works, such as Behind The Rising Sun (1943) and Back To Bataan (1945).
Far more distinguished was a now classic adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely (1944). This brilliantly atmospheric film, followed by Cornered (1945), Till The End Of Time (1945) and the British-made So Well Remembered (1946), were to establish Dmytryk as the RKO studio's leading director - a position compounded by his best film, Crossfire (1947), which concerned the murder of a homosexual by a soldier. A tightly made, fiercely liberal work, it tackled a subject larger studios would not touch.
In 1947 Dmytryk had divorced his wife and fallen in love with the actress Jean Porter, whom he was later to marry. Then, in the same year, he was called before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Alongside his friend and producer Adrian Scott, he was to become one of the Hollywood 10, the group of movie personalities who refused to answer McCarthyite questions about their leftwing politics. It took three years from his subpoena in October 1947 until, in 1950, he was sentenced to six months jail. While known as Prisoner 3568, Dmytryk received news of a major award at Venice for Christ In Concrete (1949).
When he emerged from prison, Dmytryk left the communist party - he had been a member for 18 months in 1944-45 - and, more controversially, broke his earlier silence and, at further congressional hearings, identified 26 people as communists. "I didn't feel guilty about talking," he said later. "I knew [the accused] would call me a rat. But I did what I wanted to do. I have never regretted."
Despite the unpopularity of this volte face, Dmytryk managed to get work on a small independent film, Mutiny (1951), and began a four-film relationship with producer Stanley Kramer: three were modest critical successes, and they led to Dmytryk's breakthrough into A-films with a version of The Caine Mutiny (1953), starring Humphrey Bogart. The huge box office success of this sturdy work led to Dmytryk's most financially rewarding period, though only a couple of the following 19 features have any of the spark, originality or passion of his 1940s work.
A return to something of his old style came in 1965 with Mirage, a brisk, almost experimental thriller, starring Gregory Peck, and after it Dmytryk completed a handful of genre pieces, including Alvarez Kelly (1966), the war film Anzio (1967), another western, Shalako (1968), with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot and, after a lengthy absence, a version of Bluebeard (1972), starring Richard Burton.
From 1978 he taught at the University of Texas and then the University of Southern California. During this period he wrote four lucid books on art direction, cinematography, editing and directing.