Directed: George Hill

Year: 1930

Nominated: Best Film, Best Actor – Wallace Beery

Plot in 25 Words: One of the first prison films made, and a terrifying insight into prison life in the 30s. Clue – it’s horrible and full of backstabbing traitors.

In My Opinion: The majority of prison films I’ve seen in the past tend to follow a similar line. Innocent man wrongfully imprisoned fights for justice. This put a good twist on that. A man imprisoned for an overly severe amount of time, an originally ‘good’ man, and is imprisoned alongside murderers and thieves. It changes him, and the choices he makes impact on everyone’s lives and set into motion a horror show of events.

The plot was fairly twisty and turny and it made for a nice change to be confused on occasion. It seemed to me that everyone cheats on everyone else, no one looks out for anybody else, and everybody wants to sleep with everybody else’s sister. Oh, and every convict who claims to be ‘going straight’ won’t last!

There was a lot of extras in this film, enough to make the claims of the prison holding 3000 man seem believable. And they did a fantastic job. It may seem odd to praise the extras but some of the scenes needed almost military precision.

The riot scenes in particular were very cleverly presented – not as many fake punches thrown as in some films.

Star Performer: Robert Montgomery as Kent. Originally portrayed as a ‘good’ boy, he descended to common criminal quite easily.

Overall: While not exactly my sort of film I did enjoy it, particularly for the depiction of prison life. I really would like to believe there was less corruption!