The Quare Fellow

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.

"The quare fellow " is not only a depiction of an Irish prison before death penalty was abolished :it's a initiation of a young warden who does think that he is here to protect the society ; little by little, he discovers the other side of the picture: the doctor has to make sure that the future condemned man is healthy ,that he won't do away with himself before he mounts the scaffold ; the "undertakers" being given two stouts apiece if they finish their dirty work quickly .

It's ,like "yield to the night" ,which concerned a condemned woman (Diana Dors) ,an indictment against death penalty ; when the warden (McGoohan ) meets the sentenced to death man's wife (Syms), he learns it was actually a crime of passion ,not punishable by death ; the main setback of the screenplay is that this man ,who did not want his wife to be considered a w......, is not given a single scene in the screenplay (unless the gallows count).Well acted.

The Quare Fellow is directed by Arthur Dreifuss who along with Jacqueline Sundstrom co-adapts the screenplay from the Brendan Behan play. It stars Patrick McGoohan, Sylvia Syms, Walter Macken and Dermot Kelly. Music is by Alexander Faris and cinematography by Peter Hennessy.

Thomas Crimmin (McGoohan) begins new employment at a Dublin jail firmly believing in the benefits of the death penalty. Not everyone of his colleagues feels the same, though, and as Crimmin works through his time and gets close to the wife of a condemned man, his beliefs are splintered.

The play by all accounts was awash with humour, something which this filmic version considerably lacks. Dreifuss prefers to make the film bleak, both in surroundings and via the characterisations. The prison is perpetually cold and grey, smiles are hard to find within these walls, cynicism and fatalism drip from the wrought iron doors, and of course moral compasses are all over the place. This doesn't make it a bad film, not a bit of it, it's a tough drama acted superbly, with some brains and brawn injected into the script. Yet it ultimately plays its hand as a straight forward anti-capital punishment peace, missing opportunities to expand upon hinted at themes, particularly where Syms' fraught wife character is concerned. Still, it's a must for McGoohan and Syms fans and for those who like gritty pics set in prisons. 6.5/10

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.