The Naked Dawn. 1955. USA. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Screenplay by Nina Schneider, Herman Schneider [Julian Zimet]. With Arthur Kennedy, Betta St. John, Eugene Iglesias, Charlita. 35mm. 82 min.
Adapted from Maxim Gorky’s 1895 story “Chelkash,” about a tramp who corrupts a peasant with the lure of easy money, The Naked Dawn's screenplay was written by Julian Zimet, who was blacklisted and living in Mexico. Zimet sold his script through fronts, and the film was independently produced and picked up by Universal for distribution. (The Writers Guild of America restored Zimet’s credit in 1997.) Edgar G. Ulmer, long exiled from major studio work, directed it in 10 days on Technicolor stock—a rarity for him—and made what is by any measure his most richly realized film. Santiago (Arthur Kennedy), a cheerful, ungovernable train robber, arrives at the farm of Manuel (Eugene Iglesias) and his wife, Maria (Betta St. John), and the geometry of greed and desire that follows is as inexorable as anything in Greek tragedy.
In a rare lead performance, Kennedy plays Santiago with a loose, improvisational vitality, a man too full of life to understand how much damage he causes. François Truffaut credited the film’s triangular dynamic as a direct influence on Jules and Jim, which gives some measure of what Ulmer accomplished here on almost nothing. Truffaut remarked, “A film like The Naked Dawn is a gift for a critic. It allows one to speak of a director’s ‘world’ without being distracted by the luxury of the production.”