Now Barabbas

NOW BARABBAS WAS A ROBBER is a strange little prison drama from 1949, best watched thanks to its cast of future greats including Richard Burton and Kenneth More. The film features Sir Cedric Hardwicke playing a prison governer intervening in the lives of various cons; there's an anthology feel to some of the scenes which show how each character ended up in prison in the first place. Much of the film's dour and melodramatic tone comes from the major plot of nice-guy Richard Greene, who's the only prisoner actually on Death Row. Other familiar faces include William Hartnell and Harry Fowler. An interesting rather than engrossing film.

I saw this film for the first time on Talking Pictures TV channel the other night and was expecting it to be something like 'The Criminal' (1960) but perhaps I was being unrealistic, given that 'Barrabas' was made some eleven years earlier. It is too cosy a depiction of prison life and ends rather abruptly, without bothering to show the execution of the murderer who is the one of the main characters. No riots or escapes. There is also too much focus on the romantic lives of the inmates for modern tastes.

Interestingly though, although having not being released until 1949, the dialogue in one or two scenes suggests that it is set a few years earlier during the war.

This was one of the last films made at Teddington studios before it closed as a film studio in 1951. It is a portmanteau drama with no narrative but with the central drama being played out in the condemned cell where an unlikely Richard Greene has been sentenced to death for the murder of a policemen. We see the events leading up to the incarcerating of all the featured prisoners except Greene. Burton gives a standout performance.Kenneth More,with a moustache has a bit part. Hardwicke is a sympathetic governor. Not a memorable prison drama,but entertaining nonetheless.

Written by the brother of a future prime minister, Now Barrabas is a fairly risible prison drama with progressive elements in the script. It's unashamedly sentimental in parts, giving each prisoner in a selected group a chance at redemption or not. Mostly it's interesting because it features early performances from two future stars - Kenneth More and Richard Burton. More plays fairly to type - a light-weight fantasist who drifts out of the film early on. Burton plays an Irish terrorist in a performance so grim that he's excruciating to watch. For all that, he's still the best thing here.

Not recommended unless you enjoy a good wallow.