1929 was a rough year for prisons in the United States. There were several riots that made the news and had brought a real problem into the public eye, the over-crowding of our prison systems throughout the country. Arrests were accelerating faster than the infrastructure could handle and prisoners, some of whom were not incarcerated for violent crimes, were fighting back against a system that felt like it didn’t care about them. George Hill, lifelong filmmaker who got his start at the ripe old age of 13, saw what was going on and had an idea for a film that would capitalize on this timely issue. He drafted a detailed story treatment entitles: The Reign of Terror: A Story of Crime and Punishment. MGM studios gave him the go-ahead to turn that treatment into a film and the result was The Big House, a film that will seem cliché only because it has been copied so much in the ensuing years.
As was fairly common in the early years of talking pictures, multiple versions of the film were made using the existing sets to capitalize on a worldwide market, many of which didn’t speak english. In most cases these international versions were lost but The Big House still has three alternate versions available to compare with the original. These are of interest primarily to film historians or people who speak those languages wishing to see the film as it would have been released in their home countries. For this review I will remain focused only on the original english version.
The story follows three men, all sharing the same prison cell. The first is Kent (Robert Montgomery), a man sentenced to ten years for a drunk driving accident that resulted in manslaughter. The second is Butch (Wallace Beery), a tough long-term con who alternates between being menacing and friendly. Butch is in it for the long haul, convicted for multiple murders. The final man is Morgan (Chester Morris), a more neutral presence who tries to keep the peace between the other two inmates. Butch gets sentenced to solitary confinement for sparking a protest over the prison food and, fearful of having his smuggled knife discovered, passes it to another convict before he can be taken. This knife ends up in the hands of Kent who hides it amongst Morgan’s things during a room inspection, getting Morgan’s parole revoked at the last minute. This starts a series of events that will eventually lead to a riot and more murder.
During the opening scenes of The Big House I was absolutely certain I knew where this story was going. I was wrong. Kent begins the film like he is going to be the star of the picture, a timid man tasked with surviving his sentence in prison. As he is being led away to his new home the chief guard and the warden lament that he is being placed in the same cell with Butch, the meanest convict in the joint. But this movie isn’t actually about Kent. It shifts focus away from him and onto one of his cellmates, Morgan. This bait-and-switch got me to sit up and pay closer attention to a film I thought was going to be just another generic prison story like the ones I’ve seen hundreds of times before.
The heart of the film is no doubt Morgan. This is surprising as his character is introduced so nonchalantly. We first see him lying down on a bunk in the background as Butch is stealing the show, acting nice to Kent, his new cellmate, while quietly stealing his cigarettes. Morgan doesn’t even speak up until Kent realizes his smokes are missing and confronts Butch about it. It’s through his insistence that Kent gets his cigarettes back, an act that tells us several things about him: Morgan isn’t afraid of Butch and Butch will back down when confronted by him. These two have an uneasy friendship or, at the very least, mutual respect for each other. This will come into play heavily in the finale.
The Big House was the first major talking film to set up the return to stardom for Wallace Beery. Beery was a major silent star but when talking pictures began to take over at the cinemas he saw his star falling. MGM studios would pluck him out of that downward spiral and cast him in several pictures that took full advantage of his skills and secure him several prominent awards including the Oscar. This would allow him to comfortably work for the remainder of his life. Beery has the unenviable task of being the menacing antagonist but also somewhat likable. It’s a balancing act that he pulls off with aplomb. His is the character to be actively rooting against and we do, yet we also cannot hate the man entirely because he is playing up both sides of his character, the goofy aw-shucks persona he hides behind and the darker man who committed all those murders and is capable of leading a full on uprising in prison. He does both so well that it’s hard to outright hate him.
While the film starts with Kent it becomes obvious fairly early on that he is not the central character and spends most of the film just being there, on screen but not the focus. His actions, though, set off the finale of the picture. When he is first brought to prison he brings with him a picture of his sister, Anne (Leila Hyams). This picture is seen by Morgan who falls for her having never met her in person. The only time he sees her initially is when she comes to the prison to visit her brother. After Morgan is framed, by Kent with Butch’s knife, he escapes rather than serve out the remainder of his sentence. Rather than escape cleanly, though, he tries to make a go at legitimacy and gets a job working alongside Anne, but she quickly figures out who he is. Instead of turning him in she has pity and keeps his secret. It doesn’t matter, though, as he is quickly caught and returned to prison, anyway. When Butch starts a riot with the intent on using it to escape he mistakenly thinks Morgan tipped off the warden, spoiling the attempt. But Kent was the one who tipped off the warden, not Morgan, and Butch realizes the truth just before he dies, gunned down by the police.
The biggest fault of the film is that it is too plot heavy. There is just too much going on in such a short period of time and it needed to be streamlined more, allowing time to develop the characters better rather than push through all the plot contrivances. The performances are great all around but they are in service to some rather thinly written characters. The balance was handled better, albeit in a lesser film overall, in the Humphrey Bogart vehicle Up the River. In that film a great deal of time was dedicated to the character development, it just wasn’t cast well. Here the opposite is the case. The cast is great but the writing is weaker. The subject matter and timeliness of it all heavily contributed to its Oscar for the screenplay. There is no doubt this film pioneered the modern prison film and gave us the template for many movies to crib off of. We simply don’t need all the machinations thrown in to get from point A to point B and by starting out following Kent only to shift away to Morgan it may stir things up a bit but it adds yet another layer to what is essentially a very basic story, muddying the water unnecessarily.
This film may have flaws but in the end it does highlight a very real problem in the American penal system: over crowding. This was a topic in the American mindset in the late 1920’s and early 30’s as the conditions of prison life were getting unbearable and the prisoners were starting to fight back. The Big House takes this real world problem and transcribes it into a drama that, convoluted at times, manages to put faces on these issues and, by humanizing the convicts, hopefully brings about some changes for the better. Overcrowding is still an issue in modern society and it feels like it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing widespread rioting again, unfortunately. That makes a film like this once again relevant.
Academy Award Nominations:
Outstanding Production: Irving Thalberg
Best Actor: Wallace Beery
Best Writing: Frances Marion (won)
Best Sound Recording: Douglas Shearer (won)
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Release Date: June 24, 1930
Running Time: 87 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, George F. Marion and J.C. Nugent
Directed By: George Hill
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