This was kind of perfect for me to watch right after finally seeing Dil Se..—both are movies I'd actively meant to see for, like, 20 years, and both ended up as good (and, in some ways, better) than I'd hoped.

Beyond that, though, these are two movies that pack in all the excitement and fun of their respective genres/times/places/studio systems, while also being shockingly stark in how they buck the accepted politics of their milieus. (I can see why so many people working on Force of Evil got blacklisted.)

What's more, both Force of Evil and Dil Se.. are clear proof that you don't need "naturalism" or "realism" to tell a gripping and tense story about "real" issues. They're both stylized out the ass: impossible noir dialogue in the one, and exuberant dance numbers in the other, only heightening what each movie is trying to get across.

One last comparison point, and then I swear I'll just talk about Force of Evil. Both of these movies also employ the most toxic and pushy "romantic" tropes of their eras (in each case delivered by very compelling and attractive male leads) and, at first, seem like they're playing those tropes straight. But it quickly becomes clear each movie is using that pushy masculinity to tell you something about the power imbalances at play, and how little you should be sympathizing with those characters. (Force of Evil gets there much faster, because it's an hour and 18 minutes.)

Force of Evil, specifically, is maybe the perfect noir? Mean and fast and flowery and wrenching and leftist. The relationship between brothers Joe and Leo, especially, is perfection: darkly funny and consistently spinning the rest of the plot out of control. (And spinning so flop sweatily and Jewishly that it makes me think of Uncut Gems.)

John Garfield is, of course, incredible whenever he's on screen, but I have to single out Thomas Gomez as Leo. In his every movement and line reading, he gives the impression of a man who's constantly, tragi-comically, on the edge of a heart attack. A ten-year heart attack that he's been suppressing out of pure spite.

It's not at all surprising that Force of Evil was a huge influence on Scorsese, particularly with its insistence on showing the mob as, mostly, just a bunch of pathetic dudes with bored and unhappy wives. That's basically Goodfellas in a nutshell.