The Defiant Ones (1958)

Note des utilisateurs:

7.7/10   

Réalisateur:

Stanley Kramer

Writers (WGA):

Nedrick Young (story) (originally as Nathan E. Douglas)
Harold Jacob Smith (screenplay)

Release Date:

27 septembre 1958 (USA)

Genre:

Drame | Crime | Thriller

Accroche:

One of the great ones!

Plot:

Two escaped convicts chained together, white and black, must learn to get along in order to elude capture.

Plot Keywords:

Convict | Police | Escaped Convict | Chain Gang | Prison

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 13 wins & 19 nominations

Avis des utilisateurs:

Full marks for guts, more than half marks for merit

Ensemble

Tony Curtis	...	John 'Joker' Jackson
Sidney Poitier	...	Noah Cullen
Theodore Bikel	...	Sheriff Max Muller
Charles McGraw	...	Capt. Frank Gibbons
Lon Chaney Jr.	...	Big Sam (as Lon Chaney)
King Donovan	...	Solly
Claude Akins	...	Mack
Lawrence Dobkin	...	Editor
Whit Bissell	...	Lou Gans
Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer	...	Angus (as Carl Switzer)
Kevin Coughlin	...	Billy
Cara Williams	...	Billy's mother

Autre(s) titre(s):

La chaîne (France) [fr]

Durée:

97 min

Pays:

USA

Langue:

Anglais

Couleur:

Noir et Blanc

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Son:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Classification:

Norway:16 | New Zealand:PG | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:U | USA:Approved (PCA #18985) | West Germany:12

Emplacements De Pelliculage:

Between Piru & Fillmore, Southern Pacific Railroad, California, USA

Company:

Curtleigh Productions

Anecdotes:

A technical advisor on board during filming had to go uncredited, because he was a real-life chain gang escapee who was still a wanted man.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: As John and Noah are swept downriver together, a person is seen on the shore moving into the top of frame, watching the two men.

Guillemet:

Noah Cullen: [to John] Go on, tell me all that big talk about Charlie Potatoes, when the chains off and nobody chasing you. Come on. You can't, can you? You can't because you're nothing. You're not even a man! You're a monkey on a stick. That cracker mob back there, they pull the string and you jump.
[John punches him]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Everybody Hates Chris: Everybody Hates the Buddy System (#2.6)" (2006)

Soundtrack:

Long Gone

Full marks for guts, more than half marks for merit

Proof that Stanley Kramer's decision to idealise the Sidney Poitier character in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" was a conscious, thought-out move (some would say it was a mistake for all that, but that's another matter), and not a cowardly or patronising one. Poitier's convict here has streaks of nobility - Curtis's does too - but the aggression for which he was jailed is real enough.

For the first half, everything is firmly screwed in place: the black and the white convict chained together, the local volunteers tracking them down, the humane sheriff trying to keep his forces in check. Things started to shake themselves loose when the woman makes an entrance. The story had worked well so long as the two convicts were estranged from civilisation, with only each other to fall back on, and it might have continued to work, if the woman had been interesting in some other way than as a plot device. In fact things got better again as soon as she vanished from the screen.

Solid and intelligent, but the other well-known Kramer films, considered as films, are better.