Product: Brute Force [DVD] [1947] (1947)
Rating: 4.0
Prison Melodrama Done Right
Long before *The Green Mile* and *Prison Break*, the French director Jules Dassin made *Brute Force*, a melodrama about men's lives in a prison system intent less on social rehabilitation and more on draconian punishment. The film's liberal-humanist approval of rehabilitation is movingly captured by the inmates' flashbacks to their lives before prison: men struggling to do good for their girlfriends, wives, and families. These men are pit against Hume Cronyn's unforgettable Captain Munsey, a power-hungry social Darwinist and Westgate Penitentiary's shrewd enforcer of the institutional code. In the conflict between the inmates and Munsey, Dassin crafts an affecting narrative about heroism, survival, and postwar American masculinity.The Criterion transfer is crisp and clear. William Daniels's black-and-white cinematography is particularly resonant in the shadowy nighttime scenes that take place behind the prison's walls. This edition of the movie also features a few illuminating extras, including commentary by noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini as well as an interview with Paul Mason on *Brute Force*'s importance in the history of film representations of prison life.While parts of the movie can be melodramatically overwrought (e.g., during the flashback sequences), *Brute Force* is a landmark of film noir and prison cinema, and is well worth watching in this powerful Criterion edition.