Peter Breck did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Johnny Barrett in Shock Corridor.
Shock Corridor follows a journalist as he goes undercover to solve a murder, or win a Pulitzer prize...whatever comes first I suppose.
Director Samuel Fuller is one of the interesting rarely mentioned directors of his period. This isn't to say he specialized in making masterpieces however his storytelling offered particularly unique perspectives for the period with a notable daring for the time. This is evident here as he broaches the subject of mental illness. I'll admit the film opens with a fundamental flaw in it damns exploitation of such things then proceeds to engage in such things itself, especially in its depiction of nymphomaniacs as basically sex crazed zombies. Having said that film captures a vivid atmosphere within its setting and there is a certain fascination to see a film of the period even attempt to broach the subject matter even if it may be rather flawed as such. As is common with a Fuller film, Peter Breck leads and is not a particularly well known actor, or even a character actor of the period. Why this is, isn't exactly a mystery from the outset of the film. We meet his Johnny Barrett as he prepares to go undercover at the mental institute with the help of his editor, a doctor and some begrudging help from his stripper girlfriend Cathy (Constance Towers). Breck isn't all that charismatic of a performer and as he speaks of his wish to either catch the killer, or fame, lacks a requisite drive to really setup Johnny as someone in over his head for the wrong reasons. Breck is very calm at the prospect, a bit too so, and there's no sense initially that anything should go wrong, other than the sledgehammer objections offered by Cathy.
To enter in however he needs to put up the front of a man sexually obsessed with his sister, to be played by Cathy, and here we get Breck's performance within a performance. Well he's a bit better than crazy pretender William Powell in
Love Crazy, but Powell was trying to be funny. Actually I shouldn't mock to much as the sort of seething insanity Breck offers with some needed internalized subtlety, however this is usually put aside for a bit of shouting. A lot of shouting from Johnny, and really the other insane cast members, that sadly typically feels more like hot air than genuine anguish as it is all a bit too thin and overcooked. This initially though is just the front towards Johnny's real intention, though really the film's subplot, to find the murderer. In this we return to Breck's somewhat bland, though not entirely bad, approach as the driven reporter. He delivers at least enough of an incisiveness in his eyes as he listens for clues, though only problem is how it is so detached from creating a real sense of who Johnny is. Does he care about the patients? Is trying to care? Is he completely selfish? Is his drive to find the killer leading towards madness? Well the question to all of these is...maybe.
The reason for this is the lack of nuance, and really connection within Breck's performance. In a given scene he very much accentuates what is needed for that given plot development bit, and little more than that. In this even there are somewhat mixed results. His nadir are the yelling and screaming moments, which remain hot air even as it is suppose to be that Johnny is genuinely becoming crazy. There's no notable difference though in the way Breck plays the "acting" from the "reality". He doesn't connect that growing madness with the drive to solve the case which could've been an impetus towards his eventual madness. Those are separate as a calm and cool reporter. In his moments of the inmates we have the scenes where he is sympathetic towards them and those that are not. Breck portrays both just fine, though doesn't create a sense of conflict in terms of exploitation their testimony. This is as his portrayal of Johnny never creates an complexity in his methods, or in turn his character. He is whatever the scene needs him to be, and his own work does not push the character forward. The one element of his work that does have any forward momentum is his portrayal of the physical wear of the situation. In there Breck actually does create that connective tissue between scenes as his physical work creates a greater sense of exasperation and wear from being in the mental institution. Sadly this does not even connect to his mental state where is the failing of his work. In the climactic moment of the film we have Johnny going hard to find the murderer which should be the revelation but through the deterioration of Johnny. Breck though just plays it as a little angry making his the next scene as a catatonic seem downright goofy. It doesn't help that Breck's blank stare is just kind of vapid and corny, rather than haunting. I love to find a great performance from an unknown actor, however this is sadly not one of those. This is a shame as the elements of a great performance do exist in the character of Johnny, however Breck's middling if not often lackluster approach does not realize that potential.
