Black Hand came about when Gene Kelly asked Louis B. Mayer for a change of pace from his musical films. According to the Citadel film series book The Films Of Gene Kelly, Mayer was inclined to give it to him because Kelly was coming off big hits like On The Town and Take Me Out To The Ballgame and Summer Stock, all of which more than returned their money. Without Kelly's name Black Hand would have been a nice, but routine gangster film set in Little Italy in the ragtime years of the last century. It came from MGM's B picture unit so a whole lot of money wasn't spent on it.Kelly plays a young kid who saw his father stand up to the Black Hand in America and be killed for it. The father was a lawyer in the old country and Kelly had the same ambition. When he grows up he returns to America with the burning ambition to find out who is extorting the immigrants in America and take them down. Having that same ambition is police lieutenant J. Carrol Naish who Kelly joins forces with.Although Kelly gets star billing, it's really Naish that carries the film although he's killed three quarters of the way into the story. His character is based on the real life Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino who had a biographical film of his own ten years later in Pay Or Die where Ernest Borgnine starred. Naish was Hollywood's all purpose ethnic, good at every kind of nationality with every dialect you can imagine.Oddly enough Kelly really has no handle on how to deal with the Black Hand, they're beating him up and besting him at every turn until the very end when a stroke of luck that nearly kills him causes the tables to be turned. But you have to watch the film to see exactly what.Black Hand was a decent routine costume noir for lack of a better term as it is not set in the present day. It certainly did Kelly's career no harm as he got good reviews for the part.

When I think of Gene Kelly, I think of "Singing in the Rain" or "An American in Paris," as I imagine most would. I would never expect to see him playing an Italian who comes back from the old country to avenge the death of his father. Casting him as an Italian was way off base. They couldn't find an Italian to play an Italian? This miscasting affects the whole movie.You should not look for something that resembles "The Godfather" here as there is a similar revenge story. This was done in 1950 and people were obviously more gullible. Imagine that he was able to pick up a lit cigarette with his feet and use it to light a fuse. Imagine that he could do that, without even imagining the fact that he did it in a room full of people. Incredible! The one redeeming part of the movie was the part played by J. Carrol Naish, as a police detective who figures out a way to beat the mob.Of interest as the predecessor to the films that we all love today about the Mafia.

With its scenes of extortion and murder in the Italian-American community of Manhattan's Lower East Side at the turn of the century, The Black Hand inevitably calls to mind the flashbacks to young Vito Corleone's start in The Godfather, Part II. And while it's far from that league, there's much in The Black Hand to admire. Eight years after the murder of his father, an Italian immigrant, for daring to oppose the criminal organization called The Black Hand (the script also calls it The Mafia and The Comorra), young Gene Kelly returns to New York to pursue his vendetta. With the help of police detective J. Carrol Naish, he tries to organize the tenement neighborhood to resist the reign of intimidation and terror. But the mob has moles who anticipate and thwart his every move. When Naish travels to Naples on the case, he's killed, but not before mailing an envelope of incriminating photos to Kelly. But the little brother of Kelly's girlfriend (Teresa Celli) is kidnapped, with the envelope serving as ransom.... Among the movie's admirable points are the thoughtful, rather restrained script and foreboding nightscapes, both in New York and Naples, which lend the film a noirish tinge (as do a couple of adroitly staged moments of suspense). But the story occasionally rambles off into rhetoric about the exploitation of the immigrant underclass by politicians and police – valid points, but not presented dramatically. Another dramaturgical shortcoming is that the many characters haven't been sufficiently individuated, leaving a generic ethnic muddle. The romantic angle is oddly subdued, too. The Black Hand shows signs of an interesting and ambitious production that nonetheless falls somewhat short of what it might have been.

Remarkable only for the presence of Gene Kelly, this decidedly no-dancing 1949 drama purports to tell how a New York Mafia protection racket was smashed in the early 1900s. Kelly appears to have made it in between On the Town and Summer Stock, and possibly welcomed the chance to do some serious acting, though this never was his forte, and there are moments when you half expect him to start hoofing and warbling!Kelly plays the part of a young man whose Italian father has been killed by the Black Hand gang years before, and is seeking revenge, initially by direct action with a knife, but later by legal means, though at the end of the day he has to use the knife any way. The film as a whole is variable, with some plausible dramatic scenes, but with others straight out of a Keystone Kops comedy, including some set in Naples. J Carrol Naish has a major role as an Italian-American detective, and a little romantic interest for Kelly is provided by Teresa Celli.