330 - Brute Force, United States, 1947. Dir. Jules Dassin.
Chapel is a wonderful place.
You can pray. Meditate. Worship.
And plan your next jailbreak.
Amen.
No, he said, "I'm in."
But then if you are a guard, you were not supposed to hear that.
Gallagher and Joe Collins are the last two people one would expect to be sitting in the Westgate Penitentiary chapel. But then it is a place where one is allowed to whisper.
Gallagher has taken all he can. He trusted Warden A. J. Barnes when Barnes told him he would get parole, but the Warden has always been a lackey to his own subordinate, the muculent Captain Munsey.
So Gallagher passed a note to Collins. "You were right." And asked to meet.
It helps to have fought in the war. Now you know military strategy. And you have battle experience. You can calculate the odds going in and steel yourself against what is to come.
The men plan.
Gallagher is played by the wonderfully craggy character actor Charles Bickford, the man with the furrowed face. He did not start in motion pictures until he was nearly forty. He appeared in Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man, which seems about right, as he looks captured from another time, the kind of man who does not appear in photographs but daguerreotypes. He plays seasoned men in all his films, appearing perpetually weathered, sunbaked, life wrinkled. And comfortably dishevelled. He played Slim in Of Mice and Men. Of course he did.
Joe Collins is played by break-out sensation and former circus acrobat Burt Lancaster. We just saw him in his first film, The Killers, produced by Mark Hellinger. Now Hellinger has brought him back for his second film.
Collins keeps a chip on his shoulder. He begins the film coming out of solitary confinement. He keeps a distance from the other men. Watching. Perching. Spring-loaded. The safety switch could slip off at any moment.
Captain Munsey is played by Hume Cronyn. If you know him only as the elderly husband of Jessica Tandy from movies such as Cocoon (1985), The Pelican Brief (1993), and Marvin's Room (1996), check out his earlier work from fifty years before, such as his Hitchcock films Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Lifeboat (1944), or his supporting roles in Phantom of the Opera (1943) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
Munsey believes in Darwin as filtered through Nietzsche and embodied by the national Socialist Hitler. In fact, just when one imagines Munsey must listen to Wagner, Munsey actually does put on a Wagner record. He plays it in his office as he interrogates Louie Miller, played by Sam Levene (Police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky in The Killers!).
One of the most ominous images in the film occurs when Munsey pulls down a black shade. He increases the length of the dark fabric. He decreases the area of light allowed to enter the room. He enshrouds his office in darkness.
Then he punishes Levene. Ruthlessly. Savagely. Brutally.
And we discover that the title of the film, Brute Force, does not apply to two large prisoners now meeting in the chapel, nor to the rage that seeps through their pours. Nor does it apply to the manner in which they end the life of a man who has been a snitch--with flame throwers and a hydraulic shop press.
No. Brute Force refers to the tyrannical methods of the socialist Captain Munsey.
Munsey and Doctor Walters are in the Warden's office. The Warden is not in. Somehow, as Munsey speaks he finds himself sitting at the Warden's desk.
Munsey proclaims his Darwinian worldview. "Nature proves that the weak must die so that the strong may live."
He continues. "Authority. Cleverness. Imagination. Those are the real differences between men. I walk among these convicts, these thieves and murders, alone, unarmed, but they respect me. They obey me."
The Doctor responds, "Fits you, doesn't it?"
"Hmm?"
"The Warden's chair. It fits you."
"You're drunk."
"Why not? I'm a very ordinary man. I get drunk on whiskey. What makes you drunk? Power?"
"You flatter me, Doctor. I'm just a policeman. I carry out the Warden's orders."
"Did he ever order you to crucify the prisoners?"
Then he reveals to Munsey that he knows Munsey used psychology to manipulate Tom Lister into hanging himself.
Munsey defends himself. "Visiting cells is part of my job. It helps me keep tabs on the men. In that way I can control them."
"Control them? You mean torture them, don't you?"
Walters drives his point home. "The more pain you inflict, the more pleasure you get."
"You're obvious, Munsey. Your every move is obvious. You've cheated. You've lied. You've murdered. You're worse than the worst inmates of this prison. You're the psychopath here, not they. That's it. Not cleverness. Not imagination. Just force. Brute force. . . . Force does make leaders. . . . It also destroys them."
In the end, Brute Force is about a system where there are no solutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment