Evening star., 1947-07-24


OF its kind, it has the brute force
mentioned in its title, but there
have been more of its kind than in
the case of The killers"
This is unlikely to enhance the
box office popularity of Brute
Force" even though it does give
lantern -jawed Burt Lancaster a
chance to repeat pretty much the
same character he played In
Hellinger's greatest hit.
iAnother scar on its dramatic face
is that it glorifles the criminal at
the expense OF those whom society
has set in charge of the picture S
PENAL institution. The latter may be
sAdists, brutes, alcoholics and craven
holders, but that circumstance
dbes not automatically make the
cAnvicts of Brute Force" heroes.
That the picture assumes, or appears
to assume, otherwise Is flaw
n3oviegoers may notice, even II 1t
escaped Producer Hellinger and his
colleagues.
Brute Force" has an ominously
favored yarn to spin Of what a
moron society is to let the wrong
man run it's penitentiaries. He Is
not warden, but a small, poison
ous captain of the prison guard
whose mind is as crafty as his in
stfncts are brutal. The warden is
his stooge, a mere job-holder. Be-
tween them, they give the prisoners
al mental and physical working
OVER that can only lead to bloody
naltiny.
producer Hellinger apparently de-
cihed to let the public have 1t IN
much the same way his william
handled his prisoners. In making
Brute Force" he has pulled none
of his truncheons either, the ef1ect
Of which Is to leave the customer
feeling as if he, too, had been
through the third degree.
Some especially sound perform
srlces contribute to this reaction.
TIE best of these, oddly. is that OF
Hume Cronyn as the sadistic prison
official. bit of acting that meets
its comparative match In Sam
Levene's portrait of a belsenized
corYict.
prison called "Westgate" is the
locale of Keith's screenplay which
apparently purports to tell what is
behind mass escapes from such
places.
Westgate's chief figures are the
fiendish guard captain (Cronyn)
and a convict played by Lancaster,
whose presence in the prison never
is explained, which seems unjust
of Robert Patterson who wrote the
story and Richard Brooks who did
the screenplay. The former spends
his time thinking up new cruelties
and brutalities to practice on his
victims; the latter deVising an es-
cape plan that will enable him to
return to his wife who is dying OF
cancer.
This is well-Worked story material,
of course, and Brute Force" offers
nothing of invention to conceal its
age. Instead. it chips off the last
spots of varnish and exposes the
story in all its raWness. The re-
sultant scenes are never pleasant.
whether they are dealing with the
convict's disposal of stool pigeon
in a giant metal press, or the guard
captains decision to shoot down the
mutineers in preference to breaking
up their plot.
One respect in which Brute
Force" does depart from the con-
ventions of its type is in its effort
to present various characters more
fully. Audiences are given detailed
close-ups of several of the convicts,
some of them oyer-sentimental,
but many of them of genuine dra-
matte value.
Although "WestgaUe" is not a
coed penitentiary, women figure in
the telling OF the prisons story.
They come into it as the subject of
the convicts stories of how they
got there, or what they intend to do
the day they are released. The
trick justifies the names of some