Brute Force [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Overview

Burt Lancaster had one of his first starring roles in this hard-hitting prison drama. Capt. Munsey (Hume Cronyn) is a cruel, corrupt prison guard who has his own less-than-ethical ways of dealing with inmates, enough so that Joe Collins (Lancaster) -- the toughest inmate in the cell block -- has decided to break out. Collins tries to persuade Gallagher (Charles Bickford), the unofficial leader of the inmates and editor of the prison newspaper, to join him, but Gallagher thinks Collins' plan won't work. However, Collins does have the support of his cellmates, most of whom, like himself, wandered into a life of crime thanks to love and good intentions. Tom Lister (Whit Bissell) was an accountant who altered the books so he could buy his wife a mink coat. Soldier (Howard Duff) fell in love with an Italian girl during World War II and took the rap for her when she murdered her father. Collins pulled a bank job to raise money to pay for an operation that could possibly get his girl out of a wheelchair. And Spencer (John Hoyt) made the mistake of getting involved with a female con artist. After Munsey drives Tom to suicide and prevents Gallagher from obtaining parole, Gallagher joins up with Collins and his men in the escape attempt. Director Jules Dassin would next direct the influential noir drama The Naked City; six years later, he would move to Europe after political blacklisting prevented him from continuing to work in the United States.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/08/2020
UPC:	0715515250818
Original Release:	1947
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:38:00
Sales rank:	716

Special Features

New 4k digital restoration by TLEfilms Film Restoration & Preservation Services, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio Commentary from 2007 featuring film-noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini; Interview from 2007 with Paul Mason, editor of Captured by the Media: Prison Discourse in Popular Culture; Program from 2017 on Bruce Force's array of acting styles featuring film scholar David Bordwell; Stills Gallery; Trailer; English Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing; Plus: An essay by film critic Michael Atkinson, a 1947 profile of Producer Mark Hellinger, and rare correspondence between Hellinger and Production Code administrator Joseph Breen over the film's content

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Burt Lancaster	Joe Collins
Hume Cronyn	Capt. Munsey
Charles Bickford	Gallagher
Howard Duff	Robert `Soldier' Becker
Yvonne De Carlo	Gina
Ann Blyth	Ruth
Ella Raines	Cora
Anita Colby	Flossie
Sam Levene	Louis
Art Smith	Dr. Walters
Roman Bohnen	Warden Barnes
John Hoyt	Spencer
Richard Gaines	McCollum
Frank Puglia	Ferrara
Jeff Corey	Freshman
Vince Barnett	Mugsy
James Bell	Crenshaw
Jack Overman	Kid Coy
Whit Bissell	Tom Lister
Sir Lancelot	Calypso
Ray Teal	Jackson
Jay C. Flippen	Hodges
James O'Rear	Wilson
Howland Chamberlin	Gaines
Kenneth Patterson	Bronski
Crane Whitley	Armed Guard in Drain Pipe
Charles McGraw	Andy
John Harmon	Roberts
Gene Roth	Hoffman
Wally Rose	Peary
Carl Rhodes	Strella
Guy Beach	Convict Foreman
Edmund Cobb	Bradley
Tom Steele	Machine Gunner
Alex Frazer	Chaplain
Will Lee	Kincaid,Sergeant
Ruth Sanderson	Miss Lawrence
Francis McDonald	Regan
Virginia Farmer	Sadie
Billy Wayne	Prisoner
Rex Dale	Prisoner
Frank Marlowe	Prisoner
William Cozzo	Prisoner
Paul Bryar	Harry
Glenn Strange	Tompkins
Al Hill	Plonski
Peter Virgo	Guard
Eddy Chandler	Guard
Kenneth MacDonald	Guard
Al Ferguson	Guard
Jerry Salvail	Guard
Rex Lease	Hearse Driver
Herbert Heywood	Chef
Blanche Obronska	Young Girl
Hal Malone	Young Inmate
Don McGill	Max
Harry Wilson	Tyrone
Samir Rizkallah	Convict's Son
Kippee Valez	Visitor
Al Bain	Convict
Bobby Barber	Jack
Phil Bloom	Convict
Chet Brandenburg	Convict in Yard
Ralph Brooks	Convict
Howland Chamberlain	Joe's Lawyer
James O'Reare	Wilson
Howard Mitchell	Guard
Miklós Rózsa	Composer

Technical Credits

Richard Brooks

Jules Dassin	Director
Mark Hellinger	Producer
David S. Horsley	Special Effects
Richard Brooks	Screenwriter
Robert Pritchard	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Although dismissed by auteur critic Andrew Sarris for its social commentary, Jules Dassin's masterful noir, which more than lives up to its title, is a wildly stylized tour of a prison in which the inmates are running the asylum. Still one of the harshest and grimmest of all noirs, it places a young, magnetic Burt Lancaster in a dungeon-like environment apparently just this side of Transylvania. Contrary to expectation, the prisoners are an amazingly soulful lot, with a dubiously high proportion doing time as a result of what they did for love. And they're models of mental health compared to the staff, which includes a shaky warden, an alcoholic doctor, and Hume Cronyn, as the indelibly fascistic guard, Capt. Munsey. The hounding of a stool pigeon into a steam press by blowtorch-bearing cons is typical of the facility's daily recreation. While some of the speechifying can be tedious, and the filmmakers have clearly loaded the dice in favor of the inmates, the character of Munsey remains a compelling portrait of a grotesquely authoritarian personality. Miklos Rosza's brooding score and William H. Daniels' moody photography are vital elements in the film's impact.

All Movie Guide - Michael Costello