- How do you live?
- I steal.
As a movie quote buff, I've been familiar with that brief exchange for almost ten years, ten entire years where I kept wondering what made these lines so memorable. If the protagonist was a fugitive from a chain gang, then what's the big deal about him stealing? Was he seducing a girl? Confessing to a cop? Whatever, there might have been something quite impacting about it, and all through the movie, I was looking forward to hearing that quote, I was anticipating it maybe even more than the film itself, which -you guessed it- took me right till the end and I say it's certainly one of the most haunting and unforgettable endings I've ever watched.
That's why I love watching movies, every once in a while, you have something that blows your mind, that keeps you speechless. I think the last time a similar experience left me that way was Richard Brooks' "I Want to Live!" with Susan Hayward. I think it's interesting that the two movies center on the flaws of the judicial system and on the harrowing journey of not-so innocent (but not plain guilty) protagonists, both victim of unfortunate circumstances and believing till the very end that the system works. Paul Muni is simply extraordinary as James Allen, the man whose soul is literally crashed by the chain gang routine and the barbarian conditions prisoners lived under..
When Allen has his first taste of whatever greasy excuse for a meal they served him, from his facial expressions, I could almost taste the awfulness. And the film is full of small little touches that makes it genuinely effective, notice that even when he's informed that food won't get any better so he better gets used to it, he tries a second bite and he gives up again, it's not as easy as it looks. Allen is like Billy Hayes in "Midnight Express" but this is no Turkish prisons, this is America, it's a shame that a civilized country had such awful places, but it's to its credit to allow the artistic expression to denounce it, and Melvin Leroy does it with the gripping and stark boldness of a neo-Realistic director and Warner Bros must be commanded for making one of the early prison movies with a social soul.
And the film has all the common tropes of the genre: nasty guards, friendly inmates, nightmarish first night, punishments, dying prisoners, and it's all wrapped up in a realism twice courageous since it addresses an audience who's most likely to react with "these guys are no angels, they had it coming". This is a prison movie destined to audiences who're not used to root for prisoners. Of course, it helps to know that Allen is innocent and was once a war hero and idealistic would-be engineer, but it doesn't change anything for the second act shows a man whose rehabilitation is complete and what goes in the last third act is the part that fills your mind with a cool and icy rage, when Allen decides to trust the system and give ninety days of his life to get the governor's pardon and then nine more months, before realizing it's hopeless, so hopeless Allen can't even react.
I'll repeat myself but that's because I'm truly a fan of "Midnight Express", Muni reminded me of Brad Davis' harrowing breakdown when he learned that his four years were extended to perpetuity, nine years wouldn't feel as perpetuity but what tortures Allen is the way he's taken to hell for a crime he didn't technically commit while the so-called representatives of the government can't even honor a promise, that's the real pain, the sense of betrayal. It's seldom that 30s movies would be so defiant toward the system, I said there's something neo-realistic in Melvyn Leroy's atmospheric and documentary-like take on the system but there are also moments of ironic poetry that recall Ford of French pre-war cinema. Paul Muni gives the kind of performance à la Gabin but with something even more detached and cynical at the end.
The film has a few 'naive' moments but when you know where this is leading up to, you just can't dismiss such a gem of the pre-Code era. Anyway, I regretted that Paul Muni, as "Scarface" was reduced to a double-crossing coward at the end not to make gangsters look sympathetic, and here he is the same year, being double-crossed by the system. And watching civilized countries turning good and innocent people into shadows of their former selves was quite a gutsy premise. Speaking of shadow, like I said found one of the most haunting endings ever, the last minute of the film is forever stuck in my memory, especially with Paul Muni's eyes, the way he slips into the darkness and say "I steal". Now, that's how you end a film with pure poetic perfection in an anticlimax that reflects the way a promising life was cut short because of a misplaced judicial zeal.
The film ends abruptly, with the darkness suddenly filling the screen and leaving us unaware of Muni's destination, wherever he's gone, we know he won't be back, but he'll never leave our memories.