Synopsis:

Considered the classic film noir prison film. A portrayal of power and rebellion in a brutal island prison.
Director: Jules Dassin
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Cast:
    Burt Lancaster as Joe Collins
    Hume Cronyn as Captain Munsey
    Charles Bickford as Gallagher
    Howard Duff  as Soldier
    Art Smith as Doctor Walters
    Roman Bohnen as Warden Barnes
    John Hoyt as Spencer
    Whit Bissell as Tom Lister

Opening scene: Westgate Penitentiary--rain falling on the bridge leading to the gate. The effect of a prison island. A dreary, dismal setting. The clock hangs over the front gate, leading to the bridge outside. Six o'clock. A bell rings. Roll call. Calypso, a black convict, sings his response.

Six convicts to a small cell. The five men waiting in Cell R17 go to the window to look at a hearse picking up a man who died--Frankie McClain. Words about Captain Munsey making him work in the drainpipe. The protagonists appear together: Joe Collins is just out of solitary, serving 10 days for possession of a shiv, which he says was planted. Calypso sings: "The man to blame soon be very dead." Captain Munsey doesn't look so tough; he must be sneaky. Doctor Walters appears at this point at his office, looking hung over. He says hello to Collins. Back in the cell, it is apparent that Collins wants to escape: "Nothing is okay until we're out. Get that?"

The men go through the chow line, each holding out two plates. Wilson, a convict in trouble, approaches Gallagher, a convict politician, asking for help. Wilson planted the shiv on Collins. Captain Munsey comes in to walk around. He talks to Gallagher about gangs and cliques; Gallagher asks, "Why don't you break them up, Captain?" Gallagher tells Munsey, "Like the book says, we always get what's coming to us, all of us." Tom Lister, an inmate in R17, accidentally bumps into Munsey, who stops a guard from hitting him with a stick. The black convict is serving breakfast to Doc in his office. Doc takes a couple of shots of whiskey. He says he can't leave the prison.

Meeting of prison administrators in the warden's office. McCollum is the prison commissioner. The warden tells him the prison is double overcrowded with too little work; business and unions don't want to compete with the prison. McCollum is unsympathetic: "What you're really saying is you can't handle the situation." Munsey says the warden wants to help the men (but in a sneaky voice, like this is a bad thing). The warden is warned that any more trouble will result in most of the administration being replaced. Doc speaks up: "This prison is one big human bomb." Munsey says the doctor becomes unduly alarmed. McCollum calls the doctor "a dreamer and a drunkard." The warden is a weakling, unable to decide. The doc says, "When people are sick, you don't cure them by making them sicker." The prison sends people back to society a worse criminal. What the prison needs is "patience and understanding." McCollum says any more trouble and the warden is gone. Munsey walks McCollum to the gate. The warden looks like a beaten man, speculating about where he would go.

Visiting day. The women visiting their men. Joe Collins visits his attorney, who tells him his wife won't have an operation unless he's there. Joe tells the attorney to get some cash and keep it in his office.

Collins goes to see Doc in his office. He asks Doc about cancer--how long someone has. What time is it? 10:27. In the metal shop, something is going to happen to Wilson at 10:30. Word spreads. They all know. A fake fight starts at 10:30, and the convicts are banging metal. The guards rush in; it is a big brawl. Wilson knows he is in big trouble--tries to run. Three cons with blowtorches force Wilson into a metal press, where he is crushed to death. (23:00) Collins is still in Doc Walters's office when the phone rings. Wilson is dead. Doc is Collins's witness.

Gallagher runs the prison newspaper, the Westgate News. Collins goes to see him. He presents the idea of escape. Collins says, "We're buried, ain't we. The only thing is, we ain't dead." Gallagher says he tries to help both sides--the warden and the cons both respect him. People present him with escape plans often--6,000 in six years. The linotype operator is a lifer who has an escape plan: the same plan, every Tuesday. Gallagher says he expects parole soon. "Next Tuesday?" Collins asks.

The convicts in R17 playing chess at night in the cell: Spencer, Coy, Soldier. Collins goes out to see Regan. They look at the calendar girl on the wall--the woman they all dream about. Spencer tells of meeting Flossie in a casino in Miami. She helps him escape the police, then robs him of his cash and takes his car, leaving him on the roadside. Spencer talks about things on the outside seeming good because they happen outside.

Collins has a pass to see Regan in the hospital. Regan tells him the drainpipe is the way out. The dead convict, Frankie McClain, told him to ask Soldier how they took Hill 633.

The cons are watch a Fred McMurray movie. Tom Lister stayed in the cell to write Cora a letter. He looks at the picture of the woman on the wall--reflects on life at home with Cora. He has brought her a new mink coat; obviously he wants her to be happy. Tom has stolen $3,000 by juggling the books. Cora doesn't care where the money came from. Then a loud knock at the door, and Tom is back in prison. Munsey comes to visit. Tom is coming up for parole. Munsey says he is the only one who can help. Tom says he is not an informer. Munsey tells him he is a free man: Cora is divorcing him. Tom takes it hard.

The movie is over. The warden talks over the PA system from his office. He threatens to take away their privileges. When they return to the cell, Tom has hung himself. Munsey seems to be there at all hours of the day and night. He wants to know about all the deaths associated with Cell R17. He tells the five men to report to work in the drainpipe tomorrow. Soldier explains about Hill 633 in Italy. While the German guns were trained on troops attacking from the front, a small captured the hill from the rear. "They couldn't cover both sides," Collins says.

The warden revokes all privileges. Gallagher asks the warden why. The warden says the prison needs more discipline. Then he tells Gallagher all parole hearings are canceled. Gallalgher is angry: "Those gates only open three times--when you come in, when you get out, and when you die." The warden asks Gallagher if he can still count on his cooperation; Gallagher leaves without answering.

Gallagher sends a message to Collins in the drainpipe through Muggsy.

The tower. A lever-operated drawbridge that is the only way out. A machine gun.

Men at work in the drainpipe. (What would it be used for?) Collins gets the message from Gallagher in his sandwich. They meet in the chapel at seven o'clock. Guards are watching them. The plan: they have to seize the tower to lower the gate. The machine gun can't cover both sides. The crew from R17 will attack from the drainpipe outside. The escape will be at 12:15 tomorrow. Gallagher agrees. It will be a mass escape through the front gate. The five men in R17 all agree, though Spencer is reluctant. Soldier wants to go back to a women he met in Italy during the war. He loves this dark-haired woman, though he is doing time for her crime. He brings her black-market food. (Are they married? He says so.) The police come up. She shoots her father when he tries to run out, and Soldier takes the blame. Collins tells them to knock off the talk and keep quiet: "There are ears all over, and they all belong to one guy."

The warden has a meeting with Munsey and Doc. He is whining as usual. Munsey acknowledges that the prisoners hate him. He deals with them face to face, and enforces the rules. He offers to resign, and the warden backs down. After the warden leaves, Munsey makes a speech to the doctor like a Nietschean philosopher: 

"Kindness is weakness. Nature proves that the weak must die so that the strong may live." Authority, cleverness, imagination--these are the real differences between men. Munsey is putting the warden's desk in order as he talks. He sits down in the warden's chair. What makes you drunk, Doc asks. "Power?" Munsey says, "I'm just a policeman. I carry out the warden's orders." What about Lister, Doc asks. He says Munsey enjoys torturing inmates. Doc says he knows this is the end of the line for him, but he compares Munsey to Caesar trying out his throne. "You're obvious, Munsey." He calls him a psychopath and says he is worse than the worst inmates. Munsey knocks him down with a backhand slap. Doc says that's it: "Brute force." It makes leaders, but it also destroys them. (1:07:20)

In R17, Collins wakes up, mumbling "Ruth," and looks at the picture. He thinks of his wife (or girlfriend). He appears to be on the way to pull a job with others of his gang when he stops by to visit her. He wears a hat and a suit and leaves his gun in the car. His wife is asleep in a wheelchair. Her name is Ruth. They apparently met when he ran out of gas near her house on some earlier occasion. She knows nothing about him. He can't stay, but he promises next time he'll be back for good. He is very romantic for a thug. He goes out the door. The job must be a bust--it takes him to prison.

Roll call the next day. To the drainpipe. Louie Miller goes to the motor pool: eight fire bombs and a gun, but no dynamite to knock down the gate. Gallagher sends him to tell Collins, but Louie in intercepted and taken to Munsey's office. Munsey has a photo of himself in uniform on the wall. Munsey (in his undershirt) interrogates Louie, tied in a chair. Munsey slaps him around, then beats him with a rubber hose while classical music plays. Louie is beat up but never talks. Munsey doesn't believe Collins and Gallagher are connected. Doc visits Collins to warn him that Munsey knows of the break; he tells him not to go through with it. Collins is undeterred, even though one of his cellmates has snitched him out. "The Munsey way." Collins tries to figure out which one.

An extra machine gun is set up outside the drainpipe, ready to mow down Collins and his men. Munsey is in the tower. Collins and his men overpower the guards in the drain pipe. McCollum pressures Warden Barnes into resigning, then announces that Munsey is the new warden. (Isn't this all extraordinarily coincidental?) The convicts, sitting thick in the yard, start yelling, "Yeah," over and over, louder and louder. They advance on the tower. Inmates drive the truck into the yard and firebomb the tower. The machine gun opens fire on the yard. Collins and his men ride the ore car out of the drainpipe. Stack, the snitch, is tied in front; he is the first one killed. Then Spencer and Coy are gunned down, though Coy somehow knocks out the machine gun. Only Collins and Soldier are left at the foot of the burning tower. Two guards shoot Soldier. Collins is wounded but kills them. Munsey (the Maniac) is on the machine gun, strafing the yard. Gallagher decides to crash the truck through the gate. When he does, the gate holds, and the truck bursts into flames. Collins comes up the stairs behind Munsey in the tower and pulls the lever to open the gate. The escape plan has worked, except the gate is jammed by the truck, making escape impossible. Collins and Munsey fight furiously. Collins is a fiend, throwing Munsey from the tower to his death. Convicts in the yard rush to attack Munsey's body. Other guards (where have they been waiting?) drive up. Tear gas (no one wears masks) fills the yard, and just like that, the riot is over. (1:36:00) The cons are locked in their cells. R17 (not shown) must be empty; its previous occupants are now dead.

Calypso is humming sadly. Doc is working on him. "This place is full of pain," Doc says. Collins and Munsey are dead. "Why do they do it? They never get away with it." Other prison riots always fail. Calypso says men in prison will always try to get out, to which Doc replies: "Nobody escapes. Nobody ever really escapes."

Commentary:

In this mythical, highly stylized prison, we see a classic struggle between good and evil. But who is the good, and who is the evil?  The prisoners are represented sympathetically. We see a bit about each of them outside; they seem like normal guys, justified at least in opposing the brutal domination of  machinator Munsey, who, dressed in his underwear, plays classical music while he tries to beat a confession out of Louie Miller. This is about as perverted as films were allowed to get in 1947. "See what power does to you," the film is shouting at us at this point.

Observations:
The prison seems too small, too focused on the one guard tower. We don't see much of prison life--just the politics of power between Munsey and Joe Collins.
The solidarity of convicts under the old code is dramatized in the killing of the captain's stool pigeon
What is the point of the drainpipe: some mythical underground place? Or only to create a locale outside the wall from which the attack can be launched?
If the convicts had escaped across the drawbridge, what would have been waiting for them on the other side?
Is Munsey supposed to be a Nazi? Do the convicts die a good death ending his reign over the prison?