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The title is the sum total of prison sentences, the numbers are superimposed over cinderblock-faced convicts as they file in and out of cells. The titular penitentiary is first glimpsed from a moving train along the Hudson, the cocksure gangster (Spencer Tracy) doesn't think much of it: "Whatta lousy name! Sounds like a chop suey joint." He's expecting a breezy stay, the warden (Arthur Byron) lights a cigar, sets fire to the bribe, and sends the hoodlum to solitary. "People on the outside are supposed to be created free and equal, but they aren't. In here, they are." From flashy suit and derby hat to gray duds, the joy of the quarry after a stint in darkness, hard-boiled bodies amid concrete and iron. Neither the vaudeville institution of Up the River nor the wry community of The Criminal Code, a sturdy, straightforward slammer for Michael Curtiz. A documentary eye on the valve handle that's cut into brass knuckles, or the muggy hubbub surrounding the illicit assembling of a revolver. (The escape attempt gets an expressionistic flash or two, then pauses for a moment so Warren Hymer to free his caged bird: "Scram!") The protagonist is released on the honor system so he can settle matters with the girlfriend (Bette Davis) and the perfidious fixer (Louis Calhern), a chorus of "Happy Days Are Here Again" welcomes him back. "Well, I worked my way through this joint right up to the death house." "Something decent" turns out to be its own reward, the padre's folderol doesn't mean as much as the trembling hand on the last cigarette. Through Keighley's Each Dawn I Die and into Losey's The Criminal is the progression. With Lyle Talbot, Arthur Hoyt, Grant Mitchell, Harold Huber, and Ward Bond. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |