Rent The Incident (1967)

Token at the Flood - The Incident review by CH

TOKEN AT THE FLOOD

From the very first moment, this thriller - set upon the mid-Sixties New York subway - makes one gasp.

Having fully expected it to be in that era's garish colour, one thrills to find that it turns out to be in wonderful shades of noirish black and white as, gone midnight, sundry people - mostly couples - head towards stations to coincide upon a train which is bound for 42nd Street.

Among these are a pair of low-life pool-hall jerks ( Martin Sheen, Tony Musante) who have, after hours, stabbed a man in an alley after finding that he has only eight dollars upon him. As they now see it, their task is to taunt those among whom they find themselves in the carriage as it hurtles, clangingly, onwards while a supine drunk is as oblivious to it all as the infant clutched by a couple who have fretted over the likelihood of their being able to afford the upbringing of another one. Meanwhile, mindful of such a turn-up to events, Donna Mills has been fearful of surrendering her virginity to the self-styled alpha male who, strapped for cash, has tried to take her on a station bridge; and it's not all youth, for here one finds the glorious Thelma Ritter who gives her weedy husband a hard time, as does Jan Sterling who - in long legs upon perilous heels - is equally disappointed in hers; and Brock Peters, part of a Black couple, has a chippy attitude, first seen when trying to buy a twenty-cent token, which had dismayed his pragmatic social-worker wife (who endeavours to read a History of Western Art during this fraught journey). Also present is a gay man who appears to have propositioned a doctor - also aboard - whom he had encountered in a late-night bar's lavatory. And, as if this were not enough, here are two Army men, one of whom, from Oklahoma (Beau Bridges), has a month's sick-leave as an arm is in plaster.

This might bring to mind The Taking of Pelham 123 a few years later. The difference is that those above ground have no idea of what is happening as the carriage clatters along while the two thugs, one equipped with a knife-blade, pounce upon the passengers in turn and, in effect, call upon them to address their own inadequacies (one should not reveal too much, but nobody can be surprised when Thelma Ritter lets face-slappingly rip at her husband's cowardice).

All this was brilliantly realised by director Larry Peerce who had worked on a minimal budget from Nicholas Beer's script which had first been aired as a television play. Although those origins are evident, here is a film whose hurtling, close-packed second half is well anticipated by its depiction of the varied places whence all these people find so hard a perch upon a subway's metal bench, so curiously overlooked by a poster which proclaims, “Work With The Mentally Retarded. The Pay is Great”.

How does one gauge a film's renown? Well, I have never heard anybody mention it, but I shall urge it upon one and all. Here is as much a sleeper as that sozzled fellow (who gets the closing shot) and the child: in a fascinating thirty-minute extra, Peerce reveals that, understandably enough, she was kept from much of the filming - and reveals that Thelma Ritter, not somebody given to improvisation, was inspired to do brilliantly within that carriage. What's more, Peerce's confidence was shaken at a preview when, behind him, a couple saw that the film would be in black and white - and left there and then. They missed a treat.