Vittorio Gassman is a stowaway on a ship bound for America. He is found and told he has to go back to his country, but he won't do it. There is a way for him to enter the country legally, but corroborating testimony of his aiding a U.S. soldier is needed and they won't let him get it. As soon as the ship gets to the New York harbor and he gets a chance, he jumps ship, but not before he is shot in the process. Therefore, his situation is even more dire; it's a race with time, for him to find his friend. He befriends Gloria Grahame, who is in a bad way herself, with little to no money to pay her rent and is on the verge of being thrown out. We see her eat someone's left-over dough-nut and trying to steal an overcoat, probably to hawk it. But the owner runs after her. Through this altercation, our hero, who was nearby, meets her. The film is very effective at making the viewers feel for the foreigner and his plight, as he is only one of many who leave their homeland for America and who sees a new beginning with hope for a better day there. But once there he feels lost and overwhelmed, because of his wound and being discouraged about finding his friend. After the first hour though, the film tends to rely too much on predictable plot complications and clichés, and the last half hour drags. But of course he can't find his friend, until the last possible second! The film's strength mainly is in the human experience and the individual story, as we see a young lady, in a girlie show, making money as only she can and takes him in, because she feels sorry for him. When her brother wants to turn him away, (he's just another dumb foreigner), their mother says, your father was once a dumb foreigner. It's moments like this that make the film worth watching, but it does tend to get a bit preachy, when he arrives at the U.N. building and he spouts off to an empty room, and by the time the movie's over, you feel wore out yourself. "The Glass Wall" is probably a curiosity piece in the career of Gloria Grahame (as this is found on a Bad Girls of Film Noir DVD set,) but the film belongs to Vittorio Gassman. In that context, someone buying the set may be disappointed, but I think it basically is a very ambitious yet not completely successful little film about America being the world of tomorrow for many.
Review of The Glass Wall
