Polonsky both wrote (with novelist Ira Wolfert) and directed Force of Evil. Ostensibly a noir melodrama, the film takes direct aim at world of buying and selling as is immediately evident from its vertical opening shot of Trinity Church entombed by the monolithic structures framing Wall Street. We hear John Garfield as Joe Morse, the protagonist, in the following voice over: “This is Wall Street, and today was important because tomorrow, July 4, I intended to make my first million dollars.”