I came to Brute Force (1947) for Burt Lancaster but left with Hume Cronyn.
Having seen Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success many years ago, I got on a Burt Lancaster kick and never quite left it. Because Sweet Smell… is just so damn good. It’s tough, cynical, it’s mean, it’s all New York-y. That movie, plus Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, propelled me to read Burt Lancaster: An American Life, by Kate Buford.
Brute Force is a Jules Dassin picture. Dassin was an exemplary director who put out stylish products like Rififi, Topkapi, and the proto-noir The Naked City. So it makes sense that this prison movie would feel different than other prison flicks.
For one, I have never seen a prison movie in which so many prisoners are sympathetic characters. They all drink milk and love their mothers, apparently. Makes sense, though, as Dassin was big into social causes, having grown up in Harlem (like Lancaster had), the child of an immigrant barber and housewife. Said Dassin:
You grow up in Harlem where there’s trouble getting fed and keeping families warm, and live very close to Fifth Avenue, which is elegant. You fret, you get ideas, seeing a lot of poverty around you, and it’s a very natural process.
The natural process, too, is that you’ll have The Sadistic Prison Boss. Right?
Except in Brute Force, it’s played entirely against type. No bulldog, fire-breathing thug, Hume Cronyn’s Captain Munsey is quiet, smooth, and sadistic. Anger brims under his placid exterior. “You’re the psychopath,” says the prison doctor to him, “not they,” meaning the prisoners. Right before Cronyn strikes him.
Lancaster threatens to suck all the oxygen out of every scene he’s in, and Brute Force is no exception. Yet the movie has a strong enough ensemble cast–with the likes of John Hoyt, Charles Bickford, and Jeff Corey–that they help dissipate Lancaster’s energy. Above all, Brute Force is worth watching just for one actor: Hume Cronyn.
