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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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The Big House (1930) |
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| Now that's a prison! |
This prison drama is one of the granddaddies of the genre, and is responsible for many of the convention and characters that appear in other prison movies. Although it is quite tame by modern standards, it has a gritty edge to it, especially at the end. The Big House is, at its core, very much a human drama about how different personality types come together or fall apart in the pen.
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| Kent... no, make that 48642 receives his first introduction to prison. |
One interesting aspect about the movie is that the filmmakers pull a little switcheroo on us right at the beginning. The first character we meet is Kent (Robert Montgomery). He's sentenced to ten years in prison for manslaughter following a New Year's Eve drunk driving incident. The movie follows him through the entire intake process, where he is gradually processed and stripped of his old identity. As the intake guard tells him, "From now on, you'll be number 48642" (although as it turns out, that's a lie since everyone calls him Kent throughout the movie). What do we make of Kent? Well, he seems to be a callow youth of good family, the kind of guy who usually does okay in life by inertia. But as portrayed in the movie, he's also a kid with no backbone. As the warden says, "prison doesn't give a man a yellow streak, but if he has one, it brings it out." Kent is the kind of guy who joins a frat and then is involved in the death of a pledge or the gang rape of a coed because, heck, the other guys were doing it.
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| Kent and Butch in their cramped cell. |
Because of overcrowding, Kent gets tossed into a cell with two hardened cons: the dim-witted "Machine Gun" Butch (Wallace Beery) and John Morgan (Chester Morris) a forger and thief. It is a tiny cell with a triple bunk and room for only one man to stand up comfortably at a time. Kent has more moxie than you might expect. When the beefy Butch steals his cigs, Kent demands them back until Butch finally punches him out. Morgan then intercedes to make Butch return Kent's smokes, although Morgan then steals them for himself. The Butch-Morgan relationship is central to the movie, but a bit confusing (or is that complex?). Morgan is definitely the brains of the outfit, and Butch respects Morgan's smarts (he relies on Morgan to read his letter to him) and authority... for the most part. As with Morgan forcing Butch to return Kent's cigarettes so he could steal them himself, Butch similarly tries to put things over on Morgan throughout the movie. No honor among thieves? Is that the point?
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| Butch and Morgan, when they're not trying to kill each other. |
After this initial introduction, three months pass before we revisit our main characters. Butch and Morgan sort of run the joint, or at least run a small crew of cons within the prison. The prison, a massive, art deco structure modeled on the Hoover Dam, holds 3000 prisoners, but we never get a sense that there is any sort of broader social order. Butch and Morgan deal with a handful of other prisoners and the guards, but there are no larger gang or race affiliations. Kent fits in slowly, but is always looking for an angle. Despite Morgan's warnings, Kent falls in with Oliver, a stool pigeon and agent provocateur who both foments plots and reports on the prisoners in the hopes of winning his early release. The prison itself is incredibly regimented. Inmates march in lockstep, and in the lunchroom they stand and sit after whistle commands.
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| Stirring up trouble in the lunchroom. |
Troubles begin when Butch and Morgan have a cockroach race (see also the homage to this scene in The Big Doll House (1971)). Butch cheats by sticking Morgan's roach to the ground with chewing gum. Morgan discovers the con, and the two mix it up. Butch pulls a knife, but Morgan is a tough cookie himself and he manages to disarm Butch quickly. Before any further mayhem ensues, the guards break it up, but word is out that Butch is packing a weapon. Fresh from his recent trouble making Butch then starts a near riot in the lunchroom protesting the quality of the food. As he's hauled off to solitary, he passes his knife to Kent for safekeeping.
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| Do you get the feeling lawyers were not too popular in the 1930s? |
The next day both Morgan and Kent have visitors. Morgan meets with his fancy lawyer who informs him that his parole has come through, and that he will be freed the next day. Kent, by contrast, meets his pretty, blond sister who gives him the opposite news that his appeal has been denied and that he will have to serve his time. The different news sends the two men careening in opposite directions emotionally. During a routine inspection of their cell, Kent hides Butch's knife in Morgan's coat. When it is discovered, Morgan loses his parole and gets thirty days in solitary. I'm not quite of sure of Kent's motivation here. He doesn't seem to cash in on his betrayal of Morgan with the guards. Was it just a cowardly act of panic? In any case, Morgan is furious and vows revenge.
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| Anne gets the drop on Morgan, but soon she falls for him instead. Get it? Drop... falls... I crack myself up. |
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After the thirty days pass, both Morgan and Butch are released from solitary. Morgan fakes illness, and then escapes from the infirmary by hiding in the mortuary wagon. One of his first agenda items on the outside is to visit Kent's sister Anne at her bookstore. What does he intend? It isn't clear. Being a post-Hays Code movie, there were real limits on what could appear on screen. In a way, it makes it all the more menacing. We know that Morgan is a hardened con, and we can only imagine what he plans to do with Anne... rape, murder, kidnapping? As it turns out, though, he is apparently shortly smitten with her beauty and kindness. She realizes who he is almost right away, and actually reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun. She goes as far as to call the police, but when they pick up the phone she hangs up, unable to sent Morgan "back to that place." Then when a police detective comes into the store, she covers for him. In classic 1930s movie lingo, he says to her "Gee, you're peach of a girl." But what of the detective? He comes into the store because he spots Morgan on the street and is suspicious. And as we see later on, he continues to follow Morgan for weeks thereafter. Why not arrest him right away? The detective's actions are never properly explained, and we can only assume that he didn't act immediately because he wanted to make sure he had the right man (but then why not ask Morgan for ID in the store?).
We next catch up with Morgan several days later, and from that initial meeting, something of a romance has blossomed between Anne and Morgan. He has apparently become a regular caller at her home, and his contact with Anne has changed him for the better. From a career criminal with vengeance on his mind, he is suddenly a new man, looking to make a new honorable start. He sort of hints at his desire to include Anne in this new life. "I get sort of a chunky feeling everytime I think I'm never going to see you again," he says (um, a little Pepto Bismol will clear that right up). But before his new life can begin, the detective from earlier arrests him in front of Anne and hauls him off to prison. As he's being led away, Anne breaks down and confides in her mother that she loves him. Her family accepts this development with great aplomb all things considered. Personally, if my daughter told me she was in love with an escaped convict she'd met just a couple of weeks earlier, I'd have her locked up in a convent... although probably not the convent from The Big Bust Out (1972).
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| Butch leads a prison break... |
Back in prison, Morgan is determined to fly right and earn his parole so he can get back to Anne and his plans for a new life. But circumstances get in the way. Without Morgan's calming influence, Butch has planned a murderous escape. Somehow he's gotten his hands on a bunch of handguns, and at noon on Thanksgiving Day, he and the gang plan to rush the main gate and blast their way out. Morgan tries to talk them out of it, and especially tries to dissuade Kent out of respect for Kent's family who Morgan now knows. He's wasting his breath with Butch who suspects Morgan might have gone soft, and with Kent too who has turned into a full-blown stoolie for the warden.
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| ...but the warden is waiting. |
Forewarned is forearmed (literally in this case), and the warden is ready to deal with the escape as it begins. Just as Butch and his crew manage to open the main gate, the warden orders his men outside to open fire. The prisoners retreat back into the prison with a dozen guards as hostages. Although the warden is portrayed as an honest man who bemoans the overcrowding in the prison and the necessity of using informers to gather information, he is not the sort of man to allow a prison break and riot to occur without a firm response. Heedless of the safety of the hostages (and other prisoners), the warden has his men keep up a steady stream of machine gun fire into the prison. No mamby-pamby, post-Attica non-lethal force BS for this guy. Heck, he even calls in army tanks that burst into the prison courtyard with machine guns blazing.
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| As tanks approach, Morgan and Butch have a final confrontation. |
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Faced with this violent response, Butch starts shooting hostages, but Morgan puts an end to that by locking the hostages into solitary and taking the keys with him. When Butch finds out, he goes into a murderous rage and searches for Morgan cell by cell. This is a very intense sequence, what with Butch chasing Morgan and bullets flying all over the place. Morgan in the meantime is trying to lay low, but he runs into Kent who panics and gets himself shot by a stray bullet. In the climactic moments, as the tanks burst into the main cell block, Butch tracks down Morgan. Morgan tries to calm him down, but they end up shooting each other. Oddly, after that, they manage to make a sort of amends after Morgan tells Butch that Kent was the one who ratted out the escape plans. The movie ends with a bandaged Morgan receiving a pardon for saving the lives of the guards, and being picked up at the prison by Anne.
This is actually quite a sophisticated movie in a sense, and I'd like to discuss a couple of its major themes before turning to a brief discussion of The Big House's seminal role in creating and defining the prison movies genre. First of all, the movie is surprisingly sophisticated in its view of prisons as correctional institutions. The warden is clearly a good man who wishes his prison could be more humane. But, by the same token, he's not just a fuzzy headed liberal. In the end, he has 3000 potentially violent men in his care, and he rules with an iron fist to keep order. He's less a sadist than a realist. The movie is sort of ambiguous in its assessment of him. On one hand, prison society is clearly portrayed as dysfunctional. On the other hand, every time the warden reacted harshly, he is quick clearly provoked.
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| I've always love the way older movies use newspaper headlines to summarize plot developments. A pardon and a beautiful dame waiting on the outside... who says crime doesn't pay? | |
Second, the movie has an interesting take on the whole nature vs. nurture issue. Think of Kent and Morgan as we first meet them. Kent is a frightened young man in a nice suit, who made one mistake (driving drunk) that has ruined his life. Morgan, by contrast, is a career criminal, a hardened con. Who is the good guy and who is the bad guy? The movie ultimately flip flops the two, with prison bringing out the worst of Kent's qualities, while a short contact with Kent's family brings out the best in Morgan. Even in terms of their prison personas, Morgan is a quiet, solid citizen (for the most part), while Kent is a schemer, a liar, and a rat. The social commentary is unmistakable, right? If Morgan had been given Kent's life to begin with, a good family and home (at one point Morgan says he has no one on the outside and no home) he'd have been a model citizen. While, the moment Kent arrives in prison he becomes one of the lowest of the low. And the movie is quite subtle about introducing this theme. We begin, after all, by focusing on Kent, when by the end the movie is clearly about Morgan's redemption and Kent has become a bit player.
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| Looks a little like the military... think that was by accident? |
Now, as far as its place in the genre, this is a seminal work. It helped define a lot of the lingo we think of for prison movies: guards are screws or bulls, solitary is the hole, etc. It also defines a lot of the standard characters: the kind but stern warden, the thinking man's prisoner, the violent prisoner, the fresh fish, and so on. If you like prison movies (and you must if you're reading this), then you really have to see this one. It only gets 3 1/2 manacles because of the somewhat heavy-handed morality play aspects to it and the fact that the Butch-Morgan relationship is a bit murky. It is not a perfect movies, but it has aged reasonably well.
Still, for fans of the genre, this is a must see. It is exciting, well acted, and within the limitations of the times, surprisingly intense.
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(3.5 out of 5)