Brute Force

“Nobody escapes. Nobody really escapes.” Widely considered the greatest prison film of the noir cycle, Jules Dassin’s Brute Force is unflinching, desperate, and depraved, like a primal scream intended to release pent-up energy but accomplishing nothing in the end. From the opening scene, in which rain pours on a hopelessly gray prison courtyard, the film forecasts its existential doom and cold brutality: we will witness a man threatened with blow torches and squashed by an industrial stamping machine, a man tied to the front of a trolley and used as a human shield, a prison warden torturing an inmate to the crashing chords of Richard Wagner. Burt Lancaster stars as Joe Collins, a prison inmate just released from solitary confinement and hell bent on escape; his mortal nemesis is head of security, Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn), whose disciplinary model seems to combine the most negative extremes of Darwin and Nietzsche, his disciplinary philosophy a clear nod to the recently defeated Germans (note Munsey’s resemblance to a Nazi soldier when he stands tall in his prison uniform). With the assistance of fellow inmates Gallagher (Charles Bickford), “Soldier” (Howard Duff in his film debut), and the other residents of cell number R16, Collins plans an elaborate escape involving a prison drainage project and a takeover of the guard tower; if you’re wondering if the escape is successful, then you must be brand new to noir. Fans of the female cast members, like Yvonne De Carlo, Ella Raines, and Ann Blyth, should be aware that all the ladies have minimal screen time.