One of the two underrated films made by Martin Ritt (the director of Hud and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) in 1969, the other being the Molly Maguires. This is a pre-Godfather look at the Mafia, with a similar downbeat and desolate feel. Kirk Douglas plays an ageing Mafioso who clashes with his younger brother (Alex Cord) over the way things should be done, and finds himself being edged out of the organisation as a result. In the midst of this sombre atmosphere, Ritt often makes death an occasion to punctuate the gloom. An informer is left, sprawled dead in a deserted lot. The only sign of those who killed him can be seen stuffed in his mouth: a yellow canary. And when the younger brother's father-in-law - a brilliant, oily, yet faintly pitiable creation by Luther Adler is responsible for the death of 41 Mafia men, he is taken for a `ride' by Douglas. With quiet deliberation, Douglas tells Adler a long story of a man who went for a ride in a car but didn't realise he was going to be killed; in a chilling few moments, Adler realises he is just such a man. The photography by Boris Kaufman is magnificently keyed in trilby browns, overcoat blacks and gun-metal greys.

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