La loi des bagnards

Glenn Ford is "Convicted" in this 1950 film that also stars Broderick Crawford, Dorothy Malone, Frank Faylen, Ed Begley, Carl Benton Reid, Will Geer, and Millard Mitchell.

Ford plays Joe Hufford, a war veteran who gets into a bar fight in which a man is killed. Though the DA, Knowland (Crawford) takes pity on him and wishes he had a better attorney, Hufford is sentenced from 1-10 years. Ultimately it's decided he'll serve 5 years, and come up for parole in 3.

He's desperate to see his elderly father again, so when some of the other prisoners plan a break, Joe begs to be part of it. Just before his parole hearing, he receives a telegram that his father died. When a guard yells at him for not doing his work in the laundry room, Hufford punches him and winds up in solitary.

He misses the escape, which ends up in death for the escapees. Ponti (Faylen) is the snitch who tipped off the guards.

When Hufford is released from solitary, there's a new warden - Knowland, the sympathetic DA. He makes Hufford a trustee, chauffeuring his daughter (Malone).

When Ponti is killed, Hufford is in the warden's office, but won't reveal who did it, causing him to lose his trustee status and threatening his parole.

There's good acting throughout, and a sympathetic portrayal by Ford in this film, which moves quickly. Crawford is excellent as a tough but fair warden.

Among the prisoners, veteran actor Faylen, who did such a terrific job as Dobie Gillis' father, does a bang-up job here in a dramatic, showy role. Everyone, though, is very good.

As an actor, boyish Glenn Ford didn't have much range, but he was so likable and attractive, it never mattered. His performances are always natural and underplayed, more on the style of today's actors. However, he was much more of a presence than many working today.

Good film.

A remake of Howard Hawks' 1931 The Criminal Code, Convicted serves up Glenn Ford as an average Joe sent up the river for accidentally causing the death of a man in a night-club brawl. Even the district attorney who prosecuted him (Broderick Crawford) finds his crime pardonable, but a bungled defense sent him to the big house. Parole should come early, but members of the board are cronies of the dead man's father, a prominent citizen, so Ford's in for five years.

In stir, Ford grows embittered and embraces the curious codes of the cell block. He tries to eschew the obvious dangers of a Draconian guard (Carl Benton Reid) and the obligatory stoolie (Frank Faylen, most vividly remembered as the sinister male nurse in the alcoholic ward of The Lost Weekend). But prison life is grinding him down and he decides to join in a break out. But he ends up in solitary after assaulting a guard minutes after learning his father has died, so escapes the destiny of his comrades, who are slaughtered..

Next, a change of regime: the new warden is none other than good-hearted Crawford, and with newfound liberties as a trusty he grows sweet on Crawford's daughter (Dorothy Malone). But the skies have not yet cleared, because there's a movement to kill Faylen for causing the deaths of the men involved in the prison break....

While not so truculent a prison drama as Brute Force, three years earlier, the more staid Convicted develops with cumulative power. Burnett Guffey photographs the decrepit squalor of the prison with loving revulsion. The script, too, is well written (if lacking the edge of the same year's Caged, set in a women's penitentiary), with a streak of gallows humor shot through it – the warden counts among his household staff a cook who poisoned his wife and a barber who slit a man's throat. The story gets driven by character, as well, and the characters are sharply acted: Millard Mitchell, as Ford's cellmate, and Faylen are especially memorable.

Ford, on the other hand, plays the masochist a little too readily, a point that would not be so finely drawn if it didn't parallel so many of his other roles in the noir cycle. As a result, that quintessential bull-in-a-china shop, Crawford, upstages him scene after scene. Despite a wrap-up that's a bit too sunny to swallow, Convicted holds an honorable place in the long line of movies that have peered into the national psychosis we like to refer to as rehabilitation.

Broderick Crawford plays a district attorney that reluctantly prosecutes a defendant for accidentally killing a man in a fist fight in defense of a lady's honor. Realizing that Ford was being severely under-defended by his own lawyer, Crawford tries to pass every break in the book to the defense attorney, who's too stupid to pick up on it. In the end, Ford is convicted of murder and sentenced to prison. Later, Crawford is assigned as the new warden and attempts to help Ford further.

This is a very good, highly underrated movie. It's worth a look.

Excellent "prison" movie , with several extremely suspenseful scene,particulary the death of convict (informer) Ponti (Frank Feylen ) in a terrifying atmosphere ,with the crowd of cons "yammering" and this clock (featured in almost all the shots of the scene) the hands of which seem stopped on 1:25.

In its first part,it's pure film noir,devoid of sentimentality: one is spared the trial with the interminable pleas (it lasts barely one minute) ,and the scene of the telegram avoids pathos and melodrama.

But the most interesting thing in the rapport con Joe has with his ex-prosecutor turned jail director :"I was your prosecutor, I won't be your persecutor ";as the movie progresses,their relationship almost becomes a father/son one ; and one can go as far as to say that he suffers as much as him when he sends him to the solitary ;Knowland can't refrain from admiring -in spite of his disapproval- his protégé's honor code .Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford ,sparing of gestures and words ,are extremely convincing. Knowland's daughter is a more conventional character, but Dorothy Malone (who would shine in Sirk's movies) makes all her scenes count .

This is your no-frills prison yarn of a man convicted for involuntary manslaughter. The chief asset of this film is the cast, which is led by the highly competent Broderick Crawford and the talented Glenn Ford. The supporting cast does a great job as well. The filming is stark and realistic. Crawford does some of his best work in this film and Ford is very convincing as the tough luck convict trying to stay straight. Worth viewing.