Joe Dassin

(On Cable TV, January 2021) If you’re looking for a midway point between prison movies of the 1930s and film noir of the 1950s, Brute Force fits the bill. Directed by Joe Dassin (who would become a noir auteur before his Blacklist-forced exile to Europe) and clearly playing rougher than movies from the previous decade, the film continues to codify tropes of the subgenre. Prisoners that aren’t that bad; a sadistic warden who’s worse than the prisoners (to the point of machine-gunning them with relish) and a daring escape plan that, in noir tradition, is doomed to failure. The ending moments of Brute Force are unusually harrowing and nihilistic for a film of that time—everyone is doomed to failure, and even the women outside the prison have their share of responsibility in leading their men to crime. Burt Lancaster shows up as the lead character in one of his first screen appearances, but the standout performer here is no less than Hume Cronyn, whose sadistic and violent prison warden character here completely undoes a screen persona with decades of meek appearances. All in all, Brute Force is a bit of a surprise—as brutal as its title promised, and occasionally a gripping piece of suspense and action.