Best Pictures #27:
1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
The Big House, released
in 1930, is considered by classic film fans and film historians to be the first
realistic prison movie produced by Hollywood. MGM production chief Irving Thalberg
sent screenwriter Francis Marion to San Quentin State Prison to observe real
prisoners, guards, and conditions inside prison walls. She interviewed inmates
and prison staff alike. The result was a screenplay that won Marion the Oscar
for Best Writing, making her the first woman to win a non-acting Academy Award.
The Big House
stars Chester Morris, Robert Montgomery (who also appeared together in The Divorcee), and Wallace Beery as
cellmates. Each handles prison life in a different way. Robert Montgomery plays
Kent, who has just begun a 10-year sentence for killing someone while driving
drunk. He is put in a cell with Morgan (Chester Morris), a thief on the verge
of parole, and Machine Gun Butch (Wallace Beery), a ruthless multiple murderer
that runs the cellblock. Beery had been out of work for more than a year when
cast in The Big House. Though Beery
had been a successful character actor during the silent era and done a
successful sound test, his contract was dropped by Paramount when the studio
converted to sound. Beery’s performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best
Actor and his career rebounded.
Directed by Francis Marion’s husband, George Hill, The Big House is well paced and well
shot. The lighting design of certain scenes with low light and harsh shadows is
reminiscent of Film Noir, a subgenre that is defined in part by its use of
shadows and antiheroes that wouldn’t be fully developed until the mid-1940’s.
As Morgan is marched from the cell block down to the dungeon for solitary
confinement, the light fades and shadows envelope the frame. Morgan and Butch,
also in solitary, call out to each other over the shouts, screams, and singing
of the other inmates. All we see is the empty, dark hallway as the scene slowly
fades out.
There is a brief respite from the bleak drudgery of prison
life when Morgan escapes after losing his parole. He visits Kent’s sister,
Anne, with whom he has been infatuated since seeing her picture. Anne goes from
being suspicious of Morgan to falling in love with him rather quickly. It is
his brief time with her that convinces him to go straight after he’s captured
and taken back to prison. When Morgan won’t go along with Butch’s big escape
plan, Butch thinks that Morgan has turned into an informer. The climax of The Big House is a full-blown riot and
shootout between guards and prisoners. Each side has pistols, rifles, and Tommy
guns. At one point army tanks roll into the fray.
The performances all around are pretty good. The first
character we meet is Kent as he is being processed into the prison. As he
unravels and buddies up to the prison’s main informer, Morgan emerges as our
sympathetic hero. Montgomery is great playing a character that is not cut out
for prison, scared, and just trying to get by and get out, misguided as he
might be. Chester Morris is quite good as Morgan; when he decides to go
straight we believe his change. The warden, played by Lewis Stone, is also an
interesting character. Neither cruel nor corrupt, he is a reasonable,
benevolent man. He sees clearly the problems of his prison and the prison
system as a whole, but is powerless to make any changes to better the
situation. He tells a guard that the prison was built to hold 1,800 men but has
3,000 prisoners. They want to lock them up, he says, but don’t want to provide
for them after they’re locked up. The guard replies, “The whole prison system
is cock-eyed.” The flaws of the prison system that Francis Marion observed and
wrote into her screenplay in 1930 still remain unfortunately accurate.
Douglas Shearer, Norma Shearer’s brother, won the first
Academy Award for Sound Recording for his work in The Big House, and the sound design is very good and effective
indeed. The first thing we hear is the sound of marching footsteps of
prisoners. That sound is repeated throughout the film, and it is also the last
thing we hear over the “The End” card instead of closing music. The footsteps
on hard floors and gravel, food slopping on plates, and crowd noises are all
pronounced and important to the effectiveness of the images. The sound cues in The Big House do more than just match
what happens on screen, they underline and emphasize it. The shots of dozens
upon dozens of prisoners marching in line, often from the shoulder down, or
filling the mess hall, sitting at the same time, being served at the same time,
all wearing the same uniform and making the same sounds suggests that humanity
and individuality have been stripped away from these men.
I think The Big House
is as realistic as a film of this time could be, even during the Pre-Code era. The Big House probably would not hold up
to more recent prison dramas, but it is still an entertaining film. It has good
performances from all the main players, great cinematography, a great
screenplay, and even a dark sense of humor. Morgan warns Butch against including
a certain violent prisoner in the escape, but Butch replies, “sure, Hawk cut
his mother’s throat, but he was sorry about it.”
The Big House has
every prison movie cliché you would expect to see in a prison movie: escape
plans, stool pigeons, riots, cruel guards, bad food. However, like many genre
films from this time period, it is the source of those clichés. All of the
beats and plotlines still work and are still effective and entertaining.
Nominee: Cosmopolitan, MGM
Producer: Irving Thalberg (uncredited)
Director: George W. Hill
Screenplay: story and dialogue by Frances Marion, additional
dialogue by Joe Farnham and Martin Flavin
Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Robert Montgomery,
Lewis Stone, Leila Hyams
Release Date: June 24th, 1930
Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production
Win(s): Writing-Frances Marion, Sound Recording-Douglas
Shearer
Other Nominations: Actor-Wallace Beery
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