Tonight Turner Classic Films were showing five films in honor of actor writer Hume Cronym (whose birthday is July 18). Cronym has only been dead now for five years, but he was an impressive character actor in comedy and in drama. I was lucky twenty years ago to see the Broadway production of THE PETITION a two person play Cronym played with his wife and partner Jessica Tandy, and I can vouch he was a crisp and fine a performer on stage as he was in his films.
Captain Muncey is one of the most detestable villains in motion pictures, turning his prison into a private torture chamber, with the apparent acquiescence of his guards (note Ray Teal, his personal guard and assistant). He has his way in the prison due to the weakness of the burned out warden Roman Bohman and the bullying of a political hack from the Governor's office (Richard Gaines) who is impressed by Muncey's claims of the need for discipline. But as the wise but alcoholic doctor (Art Smith) points out, while discipline has a place the Warden has never given an order to Muncey telling him to crucify the prisoners.
It's a rather pitiful prison system we see here, and sad to say it remains a problem. The warden keeps bemoaning his failure to come to grips with rehabilitation and punishment, but he has no real suggestions in him, and he is really more upset about what he will do when he is forced out for the rest of his life. The doctor tries to give a degree of humanity to the prisoners lives (interestingly enough, like the alcoholic doctor played by Dudley Digges in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY), but he is aware that he has no place to work outside the prison he is in either. Muncey, in fact, taunts him as a surgical butcher, suggesting something he did went terribly wrong. Muncey and his guards seem to fall into dominating and assaulting the prisoners at the drop of a hat. When Whit Bissell is walked into accidentally by Cronym in the lunchroom, Teal starts clubbing him until even Cronym points out it was his own fault not Bissell's. Only at one late point in the film, when Cronym is beating up Sam Levene in his locked office, do we see some of the guards react - but none intervene.
The film (well directed by noir specialist Jules Dassin) follows the last week of Cronym's system before it collapses. There have been increasing numbers of prisoners dying because Cronym has purposely put them into unsanitary and deadly work, especially in the main drains of the prison. One prisoner, Burt Lancaster, has refused to crack so far (he has been put in solitary due to a "shiv" being planted on him, with the connivance of Cronym and Teal). He returns to his cell and the prisoner who was the collaborator on this is killed later on in a stunningly good scene in the prison workshop. Lancaster is determined to escape and learns from a dying prisoner that there is a route through the drain. It has to be used in a timed escape that requires a riot in the prison yard and the use of an armed truck. To coordinate Lancaster need the help of the prison trustee (Charles Bickford), but the latter is up for parole.
Lancaster plans the escape with his cell mates (Howard Duff - in his first film, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Jack Overman, and Jeff Corey). In the course of their discussions they each tell stories about their lives, showing that the economic forces of the world frequently force them into crime (Bissell embezzles to help him and his wife; Duff takes the blame for a murder his wife - Yvonne De Carlo - committed to help him when he was being arrested for giving food to the Italians in the war; Hoyt, a colorful confidence man, is robbed with his own gun of the proceeds of a swindle and a visit to the gambling tables by an attractive woman who also steals his car; Lancaster has been keeping his crippled, cancer ridden wife (Ann Blythe) from knowing he is a criminal and prisoner). One gets a feeling that these men did not have to become criminals but were forced into it.
This is the weakness of the film, forgetting how many criminals in prison deserve to be in prison for their actions. As was pointed out in another review on this thread, there are sexual criminals who we never see, and the ones sentenced to death (the film is set in 1947) are never even mentioned. Nor are problems among male or female prisoners in their own prisons dealing with sexual predators among their fellow prisoners (and the guards sometimes). However, one can safely say that no prisoner deserves a set of guards controlled by an ego-maniacal sadist like Cronym's Muncey.
The film was shot shortly after World War II, so it is notable that Muncey likes to play Wagnerian music (so long established as music for Nazis) in his office. In fact, when he beats Sam Levene in his office he has the Wagner music playing loudly to drown Levene's screams (oddly enough the music is not from the "RING" Cycle, but from TANNHAUSER, and it is the "Venusburg" music which was supposed to be sensual!). Still the film shows the cruel, power-mad Captain as an unforgettable villain. He is as aware at the end of Lancaster's plans as he can be - but he is also aware of the warning Art Smith gives him - that power mad people end up being destroyed by their power. In his last few moments (as one sees in the film) Captain Muncey does find out how true this comment is.
Captain Muncey is one of the most detestable villains in motion pictures, turning his prison into a private torture chamber, with the apparent acquiescence of his guards (note Ray Teal, his personal guard and assistant). He has his way in the prison due to the weakness of the burned out warden Roman Bohman and the bullying of a political hack from the Governor's office (Richard Gaines) who is impressed by Muncey's claims of the need for discipline. But as the wise but alcoholic doctor (Art Smith) points out, while discipline has a place the Warden has never given an order to Muncey telling him to crucify the prisoners.
It's a rather pitiful prison system we see here, and sad to say it remains a problem. The warden keeps bemoaning his failure to come to grips with rehabilitation and punishment, but he has no real suggestions in him, and he is really more upset about what he will do when he is forced out for the rest of his life. The doctor tries to give a degree of humanity to the prisoners lives (interestingly enough, like the alcoholic doctor played by Dudley Digges in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY), but he is aware that he has no place to work outside the prison he is in either. Muncey, in fact, taunts him as a surgical butcher, suggesting something he did went terribly wrong. Muncey and his guards seem to fall into dominating and assaulting the prisoners at the drop of a hat. When Whit Bissell is walked into accidentally by Cronym in the lunchroom, Teal starts clubbing him until even Cronym points out it was his own fault not Bissell's. Only at one late point in the film, when Cronym is beating up Sam Levene in his locked office, do we see some of the guards react - but none intervene.
The film (well directed by noir specialist Jules Dassin) follows the last week of Cronym's system before it collapses. There have been increasing numbers of prisoners dying because Cronym has purposely put them into unsanitary and deadly work, especially in the main drains of the prison. One prisoner, Burt Lancaster, has refused to crack so far (he has been put in solitary due to a "shiv" being planted on him, with the connivance of Cronym and Teal). He returns to his cell and the prisoner who was the collaborator on this is killed later on in a stunningly good scene in the prison workshop. Lancaster is determined to escape and learns from a dying prisoner that there is a route through the drain. It has to be used in a timed escape that requires a riot in the prison yard and the use of an armed truck. To coordinate Lancaster need the help of the prison trustee (Charles Bickford), but the latter is up for parole.
Lancaster plans the escape with his cell mates (Howard Duff - in his first film, John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, Jack Overman, and Jeff Corey). In the course of their discussions they each tell stories about their lives, showing that the economic forces of the world frequently force them into crime (Bissell embezzles to help him and his wife; Duff takes the blame for a murder his wife - Yvonne De Carlo - committed to help him when he was being arrested for giving food to the Italians in the war; Hoyt, a colorful confidence man, is robbed with his own gun of the proceeds of a swindle and a visit to the gambling tables by an attractive woman who also steals his car; Lancaster has been keeping his crippled, cancer ridden wife (Ann Blythe) from knowing he is a criminal and prisoner). One gets a feeling that these men did not have to become criminals but were forced into it.
This is the weakness of the film, forgetting how many criminals in prison deserve to be in prison for their actions. As was pointed out in another review on this thread, there are sexual criminals who we never see, and the ones sentenced to death (the film is set in 1947) are never even mentioned. Nor are problems among male or female prisoners in their own prisons dealing with sexual predators among their fellow prisoners (and the guards sometimes). However, one can safely say that no prisoner deserves a set of guards controlled by an ego-maniacal sadist like Cronym's Muncey.
The film was shot shortly after World War II, so it is notable that Muncey likes to play Wagnerian music (so long established as music for Nazis) in his office. In fact, when he beats Sam Levene in his office he has the Wagner music playing loudly to drown Levene's screams (oddly enough the music is not from the "RING" Cycle, but from TANNHAUSER, and it is the "Venusburg" music which was supposed to be sensual!). Still the film shows the cruel, power-mad Captain as an unforgettable villain. He is as aware at the end of Lancaster's plans as he can be - but he is also aware of the warning Art Smith gives him - that power mad people end up being destroyed by their power. In his last few moments (as one sees in the film) Captain Muncey does find out how true this comment is.