Carcere

The archetype prison break picture may show it's age but it has some decent action scenes, good performances and an oppressive and intimidating setting that enables it to retain a creaky toughness.

Imprisoned after being convicted of a drunk driving, death resulting charge privileged Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) finds himself in an inhuman environment of an overcrowded prison. There he meets the likes of hardened criminals Machine Gun Schmidt (Wally Beery) and cell mate John Morgan (Chester Morris) who attempts to teach him the ropes. Marlowe in turn sets up Morgan causing him to be denied parole. Morgan is forced to go over the wall but is recaptured and returned just in time to participate in a major break out.

Some of the Big House is downright preposterous with stilted dialog and lame brain logic but Beery and Morris come across well as pretty tough mugs and Montgomery's Marlowe is a suitably craven rat. There's a bravura prison riot at the tail end of the film that is well edited and suspenseful pitting Beery against the warden played by Lewis Stone who refuses to meet inmate demands and stoically responds to the threat of hostage sacrifice by calling in tanks. In its own way and especially in its time The Big House is as uncompromisingly tough as the warden.

Convict John Morgan (Chester Morris) escapes prison and falls in love with his cellmate Kent Marlowe's (Robert Montgomery) sister, but is later caught and sent back. He soon becomes embroiled in an escape plot that also involves Kent.

The Big House was one of the first prison films, and obviously an influential one. Chester Morris is excellent in the lead, and Wallace Beery is great as the simple-minded Machine Gun "Butch" Schmidt. The best performance in the film comes from Robert Montgomery as the weak-willed Marlowe. The cinematography and set design are quite good.

Highly recommended. First time viewing. 4/5

There were prison and gangster films during the silent era. "The Godless Girl" and "Alias Jimmy Valentine" are examples of such films before sound came along. However, sound gave such films an added dimension. "The Big House" is one of the earliest and best examples of the prison film during the sound era. It allows the din of human beings living on top of one another, the prison riot, and the armed escape attempt and stand-off to come to life.

Add to this great performances by Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, and Robert Montgomery as inmates with Lewis Stone playing in support as the warden who wants to reform the men but is faced with the constraints of a low budget, and you have a great film. Seeing that stiff performances and static cameras were the norm in sound films just the year before in 1929, the technical accomplishments in this film coupled with its natural performances make it way ahead of its time for a 1930 film. The film did win the first academy award for sound, but it is an often forgotten cinema gem.

It has one really good idea, not that well explored up to that time in prison films - what happens when an average Joe, maybe a bit of a moral weakling, winds up in prison with hardened criminals? This is what happens to Kent (Robert Montgomery) when he is convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sent to prison. You see the whole dehumanizing process of an inmate in the prison intake process.

Beery, as brainless brutal Butch, really lucked out getting this part. It was slated for Lon Chaney, but his cancer prevented him from taking the part. As a result, Beery's career took off. The gray character here is Morgan (Chester Morris). He's a tough guy who is scheduled to be paroled soon, but when he is set up to take a fall and that parole is cancelled, he escapes in an inventive but morbid way.

And what does he do? Rather than hit the road for a place where he is unknown, he goes to see Kent's sister (Leila Hyams) because he had a crush on her from the moment he saw her picture in Kent's possession???? OK, so maybe Butch is not the dumb one after all. MGM just had to find a way to insert romance into everything!

But I'd still recommend it as one of the first sound prison films with good performances by a fine cast.

Remember when Caged was such a big deal, shocking the censors and lifting the lid on what really goes on inside a women's prison? Twenty years earlier, and without the constraints of the Hays Code, there was The Big House, a gritty drama lifting the lid on what goes on inside a men's prison. Robert Montgomery is convicted and sent to an overcrowded prison after a drunk driving incident. His cellmates are hardened criminals Wallace Beery and Chester Morris, no match for the innocent newcomer. The latter two have a very interesting dynamic: Wallace is the biggest, baddest criminal on the block, and everyone's afraid to cross him, yet he backs down like a puppy whenever Chester scolds him. It's 1930, and the lack of censors can only show so much, but if you want to, you can definitely interpret their relationship as more than just cellmates.

I enjoyed The Big House as well, since I love seeing Robert Montgomery's curly hair flopping in his face as his eyes light up with liquid fire. There's a lot more to the movie than just eye candy, though, including episodes of solitary confinement, riots, convict gangs, and escape attempts. If you like this oldie, check out Public Hero Number 1 next. It's another great prison drama starring Chester Morris, and the warden is once again Lewis Stone!

I saw "The Big House" last night as part of Turner Classic Movies' tribute to Frances Marion, the great female screenwriter. Marion became the first woman to win an Academy Award for screenwriting for her work on this film.

"The Big House" is a fascinating character study, showing how three very different men deal with being imprisoned. Butch (Wallace Beery) lords over all of the men with a knife and threats of violence. John Morgan (Chester Morris) is smart enough to befriend Butch and his crew, but keeps his own set of values. Newcomer Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) is terrified of prison and eventually turns "rat" in hopes of being released.

The film also infers that the public at large is partly to blame for the discontent (and eventual unrest) within the prison: at one moment, the head warden says something to the effect of the public wanting to put criminals in prison, but not wanting to spend the money to build more prisons to accommodate them. This is issue is still debated to this day.

I also found the portrayal of the lone female character, Anne Marlowe (Kent's sister, played by Leila Hyams), very refreshing and unexpected. Instead of the crying, simpering type we might expect in a prison movie, we are given a smart and compassionate woman who owns her own business.

All of the actors gave excellent, realistic performances and Frances Marion's screenplay was well-deserving of the accolades it received. The insight and sensitivity that she used to write about these characters and this place surpasses most of the scripts written by men on the same subject.