Brute Force
With Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford.
US, 1947, 35mm, black & white, 98 min.
Soon-to-be-blacklisted director Jules Dassin's excoriating and angry prison drama uses the "big cage" as a metaphor for the lost innocence and spiritual malignancy of post-WWII America. One in a series of Forties’ films haunted by talismanic portraits of women, Brute Force uses a dreamy calendar model as the inspiration for a series of flashbacks that reveal Lancaster and his fellow cellmates to be united by bad luck, bad timing and impossible love. Lancaster's mournful yearning turns to embittered rage when a carefully planned break-out pits him against the messianic and warped ego of the Napoleonic prison warden made viciously real by the brilliant Hume Cronyn. During the film's furious, fiery climax of man against machine, Lancaster's expressive use of his body is harrowing and perhaps unsurpassed in his entire career.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Sweet Smell of Success
Brute Force
The Rose Tattoo
The Crimson Pirate
Ulzana's Raid
Conversation Piece
From Here to Eternity
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
I Walk Alone
The Leopard
The Killers
Atlantic City
Criss Cross
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
The Train
Vera Cruz
The Swimmer
Run Silent Run Deep
A Child Is Waiting
Judgment at Nuremberg
