Director: Jules Dassin
Producer: Mark Hellinger
Screenwriter: Richard Brooks
Cinematographer: William Daniels
Music: Miklos Rozsa
Studio: Universal 1947
Main Acting: Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn
Many people might vote for Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption as the greatest American prison drama film. Me, I’ll stick with this 1947 Jules Dassin picture. Bleak, somber, and with more than its fair share of suffocating gloominess, the relentless despair is served on a cold plate like the rancid food the convicts are forced to eat. Inside the jail house walls, Captain Munsey (played brilliantly with reptilian grace by Hume Cronyn) presides over the proceedings with an obsessed dictator’s calculated preciseness: nothing exceeds his grip without his approval and know-how. For Dassin, the prison is a place where morals vanish, or at the least, get trampled on. Absolute power over the incarcerated is the ultimate ambition for the corrupt authority figures. Rehabilitation is not a concern, only the ability to exert one’s supremacy over the hapless many. As Warden A. J. Barnes (played by the future blacklisted actor Roman Bohnen) says near the beginning of the movie, “You know what this prison is, one big human bomb. You say kick it and it will be quiet, smash it and it won’t explode.” A dire warning unheeded. Continuous oppression will only result in an uprising, a deadly revolt. (more…)