Brute Force **** (1947, Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, Yvonne De Carlo) – Classic Movie Review 1580

Director Jules Dassin’s 1947 film noir prison-break thriller Brute Force is admirably tough and exciting, quite brutal for its day. It has exactly the right star in Burt Lancaster as Westgate Penitentiary inmate Joe Collins, who leads the convicts in an escape plan, revolting against the prison’s sadistic chief of security, Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn), a nasty, ambitious prison officer who rules by brute force.

After Joe’s attorney visits to tell him that his wife Ruth (Ann Blyth) won’t undergo an operation for cancer unless he is beside her, Joe presses another inmate, Gallagher (Charles Bickford), to help him escape.

Based on a story by Robert Patterson, Richard Brooks’s intelligent, humane screenplay is an intelligent entertainment that delivers its thrills, but offers an undercurrent of thoughtful ideas about the evils of force and fascism (‘force does make leaders, but you forget one thing, it also destroys them’), and fleshes out the characters of the inmates and the women (Blyth, Ella Raines as Cora Lister, Yvonne De Carlo as Gina Ferrara) in their lives via useful, helpful flashbacks. 

Unfortunately, though neatly, in each case it was love for a woman that got the prisoner in trouble with the law. These are the rules of film noir. Indeed it was advertised as ‘MEN CAGED ON THE INSIDE… driven by the thought of their women on the loose!’

Miklós Rózsa’s score and William H Daniels’s cinematography greatly add to the noir atmosphere. The story was inspired by the 2–4 May 1946 so-called Battle of Alcatraz, in which prisoners fought a two-day battle against guards rather than surrender during a escape attempt. It is one of several film noir thrillers made by Dassin just after World War Two, including memorably Thieves’ Highway, Night and the City and The Naked City.

Also in the cast are Howard Duff, Whit Bissell, Jeff Corey, Sam Levene, John Hoyt, Richard Gaines, Frank Puglia, Vince Barnett, James Bell, Jack Overman, Ray Teal, Jay C Flippen, Howland Chamberlin and John Harmon.

Brute Force is directed by Jules Dassin, runs 98 minutes, is made by Mark Hellinger Productions, released by Universal Pictures (1947) (US) and General Film Distributors (1947) (UK), is written by Richard Brooks, based on a story by Robert Patterson, is shot in black and white by William Daniels, is produced by Mark Hellinger, and is scored by Miklós Rózsa.

De Carlo re-teamed with Lancaster for Criss Cross in 1949. The producer Mark Hellinger died suddenly of a heart attack on December 21 1947, aged 44.

Later, Lancaster and Bissell also starred together in another prison movie, Birdman of Alcatraz (1962).

Ann Blyth turned 92 on 16 August 2019.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1580

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