Director: Don Siegel
The opening sequence of Riot in Cell Block 11 is a newsreel montage that articulates the frequency of prison riots across the country. With this introduction, it’s clear that director Don Siegel and screenwriter Richard Collins are articulating that this story is one of many, and that it is representative of a concern that exists outside of the escapist confines of the movie theater. As a message movie, it has some success, albeit in a different vein than a film like I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang. That is, it doesn’t show the violence–the prisoners often speak of their mistreatment and the overcrowding, but we don’t see it first hand–but the outrage that results from it. At its best, it’s a nicely complicated film about a revolt against a repressive institution, where even the innocent guards are implicated. When one of the guards tries to articulate that he’s just a man feeding his family, he’s met with disdain. He knows full well of the implications of what he’s involved in and continues to work for the institution that is robbing the prisoners of their own humanity. Neville Brand is well-cast as the go-between who successfully navigates both the world of the prisoners and of the warden. He’s not a “good” man–in some instances, he seems downright sociopathic–but the only man in the position to stand up for his cell block.
Director: Don Siegel
Director Don Siegel would earn his reputation in Hollywood during the 1950s with a number of high quality B-pictures, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Baby Face Nelson. Before that, he was enlisted by RKO Pictures to direct Out of the Past stars Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in The Big Steal, a slight, but hugely satisfying chase thriller about a lieutenant and a girl racing across Mexico in pursuit of the $300,000 that has been stolen from army payroll. Again, the pairing have great sexual chemistry (though, really, could Mitchum look uninterested talking to any beautiful woman?), bouncing off of each other with quick-witted put downs and comebacks. Most memorably, they arrive at a closed road and Greer charms her way through by convincing the foreman that she and Mitchum are lovers on the run because her father wants her to marry another man. When she kisses Mitchum in an attempt to validate the farce, he perks up for the rest of the film as if he were a predator who has gotten a whiff of blood. With a supporting cast including reliable heavy William Bendix and the Mexican-born Ramón Novarro as an affable but sly Police Inspector, The Big Steal might not carry the intrigue of Out of the Past‘s iconic fatalism, but it is well-crafted and boundlessly entertaining all the same.
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