Les révoltés de la cellule 11

I hadn't even heard of this movie before until I stumbled upon the DVD of it at my neighborhood video store, and I decided to take a risk and rent it. After watching it, I'm glad I took a chance. Though the movie does seem a little tame when compared to modern day prison movies, it still packs a decent sized punch. It does bring up some of the brutal things prisoners have to go through, as well as the sometimes brutal behavior of prisoners themselves. And the way things are wrapped up at the end does come across as believable. The authentic feel of the movie is greatly assisted by shooting in a real prison with real inmates and guards.

If I have a complaint about the movie, it would be that none of the characters are really examined deeply. I would have liked to have learned more about some of the ringleaders of the riot, as well as some of the guards. Though such deeper examinations might have made the movie much longer than the lean yet efficient eighty minute running time, and the movie might have dragged. But that's a minor problem; the movie as a whole works very well.

Using nothing but character players and the personal recollections of what producer Walter Wanger saw while he did a stretch in the joint Don Siegel crafted a real masterpiece of a prison film in Riot In Cell Block 11. In fact the lack of star players gives this film a nice ring of authenticity to it.

Cell Block 11 in this particular prison is the solitary ward, the place where the toughest cases are assigned. With a pair like Neville Brand and Leo Gordon in that block would you think otherwise.

Anyway to protest the conditions they're in the prisoners led by Brand stage a riot where they take the guards assigned to that block hostage. When Brand is wounded in a quarrel, Leo Gordon takes over leadership and he's belonging in the psycho ward. But he's the toughest guy in the joint and nobody is going to argue with him.

Emile Meyer does a great job as the warden who is a decent and compassionate individual trying to affect a few reforms. His pleas fall on deaf ears because then as now, convicts don't have any votes and by definition they are an anti-societal group. Meyer's humanity is contrasted with that of Frank Faylen who is a political appointee and tries a grandstand play with the convicts that almost gets him killed.

This is as realistic a prison drama as you will ever get. Big accolades go here to Walter Wanger who had an incredible unique perspective of life on the inside and turned it with Don Siegel's help into a great motion picture.

Several prison inmates, to protest brutal guards, substandard food, overcrowding and barely livable conditions, stage an uprising, in which most of the inmates join, and take several guards hostage. Negotiations between the inmates and prison officials are stymied, however, by politicians interfering with the prison administration, and by dissension and infighting in the inmates' own ranks.

The producer Walter Wanger (known for Ford's "Stagecoach" and Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent") had recently been in prison for shooting his wife's lover, and his experience there motivated this production. The film was shot on location at Folsom State Prison with real inmates and guards playing background roles.

"Riot in Cell Block 11" was the first film work for Sam Peckinpah, who was hired as a third assistant casting director by Don Siegel. Wanger and Siegel would team up again two years later for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

The Criterion release is a must-have, with plenty of background information on those involved, the inspiration, related writings and an excellent audio commentary from a noted film historian.

Here is a jail flick made in sympathy to the prisoners, not that this was so rare before criminals became much more violent in the 1960's. Fed up with the inhumane conditions within the penal system, the inmates rebel. A guard is knocked out and locked up, his keys used to free the other prisoners, and the jail is overtaken in short order. The scene where the prisoners yell and empty the contents of their cells everywhere makes for powerful cinematography.

The prisoners make their demands known, and they want them printed in the papers for all the public to see. They want to be involved in a work program instead of sitting idle; they want the jail to be less crowded and better organized. If their needs are not met, guards will be killed, and the blame will be placed on the penal system authorities. The liberal warden of the prison actually wants to grant their demands, but his budget is constrained by politicians far removed from the system, and thus he is helpless as the clock ticks down.

The film is non-stop excitement and drama. I liked seeing the relationship between the prisoners, and their roles in the revolt. Neville Brand, with a gravelly voice and a build like a Sherman tank, is perfectly cast as the group leader and negotiator.

The movie is based on a story of an actual prison riot in the 1950s, and producer Walter Wanger's experiences as an inmate. Isn't it odd that celebrities get religion on the issue of prison reform AFTER they have been behind bars? Dan Rostenkowski comes to mind too.

Riot in Cell Block 11 comes as a bit of a shock, but not because of its brutality (it's a cuddly little puppy compared to Jules Dassin's Brute Force). The shock is that Don Siegel, later to become inextricably associated with such violent and/or reactionary movies as his remake of The Killers, Madigan and Dirty Harry, turned out a temperate, balanced and humane look at prison conditions; another shock is that the movie emerged in the middle of a complacent decade not remembered for its sympathy to marginalized groups in American society.

The droning voice-over that opens the movie doesn't bode well: It warns of a wave of riots throughout penitentiaries across the country and even takes us to a criminal-justice convention in Toronto where the topic is aired. But soon we're inside Cell Block 11, part of a run-down, overcrowded institution whose warden (Emile Meyer) has been campaigning for reforms, to no avail. (Standing up for convicted criminals, then and now, is political suicide.) When opportunity knocks, the inmates take over the asylum. What they want is press coverage of their quite moderate demands: More elbow room, separate facilities for the mentally ill among them, job training. But they've taken guards as hostages, and threaten to execute them if their demands aren't met.

Leader of the rebels is Neville Brand, who tries to negotiate in good faith, but Meyer has one hand tied behind his back – by Frank Faylen, a hard-line state bureaucrat. Brand, too, has trouble keeping the prisoners in line, particularly those who see the riot less as a cause than as a chance for some cheap thrills. Siegel manages to keep the story taut within the claustrophobic confines of the prison and without too much in the way of splashy incident, until he brings it to a surprisingly rueful end. Somehow, he has managed to make an issues movie told almost solely through action.

Siegel's career proved that he had more sides to him than he's generally known for. He started out cutting montages in other directors' movies (Blues in the Night and The Hard Way among them); when he moved into directing, his early work showed range in style and tone: The period thriller The Verdict, the light-hearted noir The Big Steal, the eschatological drama Night Unto Night. Too bad we can't remember him by saying that he just got better and better, because, unfortunately, it just isn't so.