Der Todeskandidat

I made the mistake of expecting this film to be pretty faithful to Brendan Behan's play. Instead the moviemakers added so much as to lose very much the play's essence. I gave the movie a 6, because what they did do was decent otherwise. But please, go watch the play live or else read it.

1962's "The Quare Fellow" was one of those vintage motion pictures that (IMO) had both it fair share of good moments, as well as its not-so-good moments, too.

I certainly found that this film presented its outlook (from the perspective of a young prison guard) in a very bleak and hopeless manner.

Perhaps you will be more entertained by "The Quare Fellow" than I was.

This is a grim realistic drama of life and death at a prison in Ireland, where we meet the prisoners and their warders and a wife of one of the prisoners, with also priceless scenes from a nearby pub, which actually offers the best scenes of the film - the prison, like all prisons, isn't quite cheerful. But you get into the minds of the prison warders, and that is psychologically very interesting, as none of them is sadistic or cruel at all. On the contrary, executions are the worst thing they know, and the action of the film is from the times before executions were cancelled in England. Sylvia Syms and Patrick McGoohan both make very sensitive parts, and especially Sylvia Syms' performance is outstanding. It's a drama growing more exciting the longer it lasts, and the outcome isn't very funny, but there is actually nothing else to do.

Maybe many of viewers and audiences in general will find this movie bland, flat, maybe of the so British or Welsh accent, sometimes hard to understand, even for American folks.... But the story is unusual, showing prison from a warden, guardian pint of view, instead of the inmates one. It is talkative but rewarding. This scheme, topic made me a little think of THE APPRENTICE, made in 2016, a movie from Singapour; a very close story, though not exactly the same either. Adapted from a play, Patrick mc Goohan is good for my taste, but I would have also imagined Stanley Baker in this role. A bit depressing too, and I like that.

"The Quare Fellow" is a film about prisons--particularly focusing on capital punishment. It's all told from the viewpoint of a new prison guard (Patrick McGoohan) who has learned that his new job will include assisting in the executions. At first, this doesn't seem to bother him, as he sees his job as a public service and the men being killed had earned their fate. However, after meeting the wife of the man he's about to execute, doubts enter his mind--especially since her actions led to her husband committing murder.

The film is clearly anti-death penalty and shows the prison guards pretty uniformly despising it. Whether this is true in reality, I have no idea but the idea is interesting. The story is also told in a nice straight-forward manner--without a lot of melodrama and told almost documentary style. However, the film has a big weakness--you never really connect with the condemned nor is there much of a sense that you should feel sorry for the guy. Yes, no one likes capital punishment but this particularly case just doesn't seem all that compelling. As a result, it's a film that fails to connect on an emotional level and loses some of its impact as a result. A decent film but no more....and there are certainly better anti death penalty films.

By the way, the title apparently is a reference to the condemned man--called 'quare fellows' in the Irish prison system.