I didn't find this to be a bad film at all, but based on my previous viewings of Jules Dassin's movies I found the style of this one to be surprisingly sentimental and melodramatic. I think the extent of our identification with the character played by Burt Lanchaster was too great, he's far too much of a "hero" for the film to be really interesting.
Nonetheless there are a lot of interesting elements here. Hume Cronyn's performance is definitely a brave one and a very effective one. There's a kind of pettiness that hangs about him that makes his sadistic guard captain very chilling and at the same time convincing. For example, he fancies himself an expert at torture but doesn't manage to get good information from the one suspect we see questioning, nor does his treatment of the Lancaster character result in the kind of intimidation he images it will. And the way he's dressed down by Art Smith's character (by the way, Smith deserved much higher billing relative to his importance in the film) makes him seem very vulnerable.
The thing I most disliked in the movie though was the flashback sequences which made the whole affair seem corny. All of them deal with women who the men in prison have left on the outside, and all of these guys are basically angelic in the flashbacks. There's one with a guy stealing supplies for his Italian girlfriend. And then there's Lancaster's which is saved for the end, the most ridiculous of all because he's got a woman in a wheelchair who he's trying to save from some disease. It was like the most horrid kind of 1800s melodrama stuck into a supposedly hard edged prison movie.
Jules Dassin did a good job of making the movie and all the actors played their parts very well, but the thing was undone from the beginning by that script which called for undue sentiment. I didn't think it made it a truly bad film, but it's a very mixed bag to me and I'm surprised it's been hailed by so many as a "hard boiled" film.
Nonetheless there are a lot of interesting elements here. Hume Cronyn's performance is definitely a brave one and a very effective one. There's a kind of pettiness that hangs about him that makes his sadistic guard captain very chilling and at the same time convincing. For example, he fancies himself an expert at torture but doesn't manage to get good information from the one suspect we see questioning, nor does his treatment of the Lancaster character result in the kind of intimidation he images it will. And the way he's dressed down by Art Smith's character (by the way, Smith deserved much higher billing relative to his importance in the film) makes him seem very vulnerable.
The thing I most disliked in the movie though was the flashback sequences which made the whole affair seem corny. All of them deal with women who the men in prison have left on the outside, and all of these guys are basically angelic in the flashbacks. There's one with a guy stealing supplies for his Italian girlfriend. And then there's Lancaster's which is saved for the end, the most ridiculous of all because he's got a woman in a wheelchair who he's trying to save from some disease. It was like the most horrid kind of 1800s melodrama stuck into a supposedly hard edged prison movie.
Jules Dassin did a good job of making the movie and all the actors played their parts very well, but the thing was undone from the beginning by that script which called for undue sentiment. I didn't think it made it a truly bad film, but it's a very mixed bag to me and I'm surprised it's been hailed by so many as a "hard boiled" film.