MUTINY IN THE BIG HOUSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 27, 29 December 1939, Page 19

MUTINY IN THE BIG HOUSE

j (Monogram) When men go to prison they go, as this picture needlessly points out, to pay a debt to society--a good thing for society, quite often, but not a good thing for the men, very often. The prison chaplain (Charles Bickford) feels for them, very deeply. But they make it hard for him. He has to smite their re. pressed areas with hearty Monogram

psychology, hip and thigh. Sometimes it works; but man-to-man-heart-to-heart talks and Treating Them Like Human Beings Instead of Machines Run by @ Clock did not stop the mutiny in The Big House. However, all the little drops of loving kindness had worn a hollow in the stony heart of Johnny Gates, and Father Joe’s shining courage gets right into his soul in the end. Even the hardboiled Red goes away after the mutiny with food for thought before they call the tune for his last dance (when " they all have a different routine." ) Like that other derisive critic, little Audrey, I just laugh, and laugh, and laugh when they tell me Hollywood can pretend to be crusading. But Hollywood knows the rules, such as they are, and "Mutiny in the Big House" has more than enough drama as material for the ad.-writers: numbers, tramping feet, shadowy cells, cold murder, a bass-bari-tone voice for The Lord’s Prayer as doors close behind the doomed man, the stool-pigeon, the worried warden, the tough warder, sops and sentiment. The picture manages to raise some interest. Hollywood may lack Shaws, Galsworthies, or Ibsens, but it had Director William Nigh to make some* thing that is superficially interesting, however small will be the reactions of the Prisons Department. Dedicated to Father Patrick O’Neil for his courageous part in a mutiny at Canon City, Colorado, on October 3, 1929, the picture sets out to be heroie¢ about the life of prison chaplains. Hollywood’s greatest tragedy, of course, is that it has set out on this and similar roads so often that it can no longer lead anyone anywhere, unless by a rare stroke of luck or genius. But Charles Bickford really does make the best of a not very good job. Barton McLane as the humane warden, and the rest of a purely male cast, are all perfectly in character. If Monogram had only let me disregard Father O’Neil and social justice I should say that this was quite good entertainment.