The Clay Pigeon is a 1949 American film noir directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Carl Foreman, based on a true story. The drama features Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, a real-life husband and wife.

Plot

Jim Fletcher (Williams), a former inmate in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, awakes from a coma at a Naval hospital, and is then informed that he has been accused of murder. As Fletcher is uncertain of his guilt, he escapes from the hospital to search for his best friend, another ex-POW.

Cast

Depiction of Japanese Americans

Although the movie shows Jim's Japanese captors as extremely sadistic and inhumane, it also casts the much-maligned Japanese Americans in a positive light. As Mrs. Mioto, (a Japanese American) helps Jim escape his pursuers, he sees a photograph of her deceased husband, Sergeant John Mioto, member of the 442d Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army. It is accompanied by the certificate for his Distinguished Service Cross, awarded for "Extraordinary Heroism". Film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculates this is the first time the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, composed mostly of Japanese Americans, was acknowledged in a movie, and states that this was not simply the studio's formulaic trope of balancing something negative with a positive, but rather screenwriter Carl Foreman's personal progressive outlook.

Reception

Critical response

Time Out film reviews wrote of the film, "Directed by Fleischer with tight, spare energy, although the implausible script and bland leading performances (with Hale as the dead friend's wife, initially hostile but soon losing her heart) make it much inferior to The Narrow Margin.