The Big House is an early movie about life in prison. It was written by Frances Marion, the first woman to win an Oscar for a screenplay—for this film, actually. She would repeat as a winner the next year with the movie The Champ. Interestingly, both films star Wallace Beery, one of the quintessential tough guys of the early sound years in film. Marion and Beery seem to have been a good match professionally, making several films together over the years. And how intriguing that a woman won back-to-back Oscars writing two films about tough guys in prison and in boxing, respectively; I wonder if a studio nowadays would even contemplate a script about such men that was written by a woman. Nevertheless, The Big House is especially noteworthy viewing today for the ways it has obviously influenced almost every prison movie that has followed it.
Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery in an early leading role for him) has been sentenced to ten years in prison for killing another man while driving drunk. The opening scenes show us the process of admitting a prisoner: he has his picture taken with his prisoner number, gets fingerprinted, and changes from a suit and tie into prison garb. He also learns that he will be placed into a cell with a couple of hardened criminals, “Machine Gun” Butch (played by Beery) and Morgan (played by Chester Morris). One of the guards warns the warden (played by the ubiquitous Lewis Stone) about the influence such men could have on one so young as Marlowe, but the warden replies with a speech about overcrowding in prison. That should be your first hint that trouble awaits both Marlowe and the rest of the prisoners as well.
Butch is serving time for murder; he killed his girlfriend Sadie, among others. That he now regrets poisoning his girlfriend does not necessarily mean he wouldn't do it again, for the record. Morgan is in prison for robbery, and he too has apparently been guilty of more than one offense. Each one of them tries to be the boss of the cell, with a dispute over Marlowe's cigarettes giving Morgan an early edge. Butch is rather proficient at stealing other people's stuff, so Morgan has to chastise him on several occasions. They are, of course, friends beneath all of the bluster, but when in prison, you apparently have to act like a tough guy in order to survive.
We get what are now typical scenes in prison movies. The prisoners have to march in step as they walk out of their cells to the prison yard for exercise. They have to be lined up for meals in the mess hall. There's a near-riot in the mess hall over the quality of the food. Prisoners are sent to the "dungeon" (solitary confinement) when they misbehave. There are scenes involving the planning of a prison break, and there's even an escape using that always under-supervised area of a prison, the hospital ward. You'll witness all of these kinds of scenes in later movies set in prisons; they are so expected at this point to almost be clichés (if they haven't already achieved that status).
You're probably wondering about the issue of sexual behavior in prison. Today, such a topic would be and frequently is handled directly and perhaps graphically. However, aside from one couple among the prisoners who have their arms around each other's shoulders, I couldn't detect any homosexual or homoerotic behavior. Well, maybe the climactic scene with Butch and Morgan where they forgive each other has elements of the homosocial (to use Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's term), but that's the extent of it onscreen in The Big House.
There is, however, a woman in all of this, and it's Marlowe's sister. On the young man's first night in jail, Butch and Morgan see her picture and are immediately smitten. Morgan later sees Anne Marlowe (Leila Hyams) on visiting day, and when he escapes from jail, he goes in search of her, ostensibly to enact revenge for what he thinks is Marlowe's double-cross involving a planted knife. Instead, he falls in love with her, a rather unexpected turn of events, particularly since she knows that he is an escaped convict. Her brother has even written her to warn her about Morgan, yet she still dates him until the police show up at her parents' house to arrest him—on the very day he was leaving for the Pacific islands, no less. I guess it's understandable given how handsome Morris was. When a guy who looks like him says, "Gee, you're a peach of a girl," how could anyone resist?
The key sequence in the film is the attempted prison break, and it’s the focus of much of the last quarter of the movie. Butch and the members of his gang, including a rather unwilling Marlowe, plan to use a daily ritual involving a bouquet of flowers passed through the front gate as a means of escape. They are somewhat successful, making it to the storeroom where the weapons like Tommy guns are kept. However, the guards and the warden are quick to respond, and it isn't long before there's a lengthy shoot-out that leaves many dead and wounded on both sides. Butch wants to get revenge on Morgan because he thinks the returning prisoner has ratted him out, not realizing that Marlowe is truly responsible for the guards knowing about the plans for a break-out. Marlowe has a nervous breakdown, starts screaming, and gets shot. Butch and Morgan shoot each other, but Morgan survives to be proclaimed a hero for saving some of the guards who had been taken hostage. He is released early and reunited with Anne.
I know filmic technique isn't really the key to a movie's success most of the time, but when I watch some of these older films, I marvel at how they were inventing film language before our eyes. The Big House uses what has now become a cliche to mark time: the passing of months on the calendar. It's interesting to see what would have still been a fresh idea in 1930 but which has now become so overused as to render it almost laughable. I also particularly admired the use of a dissolve in the mess hall. First, we see the utensils on the table. Then the full hall comes into view; it's empty, just rows and rows of tables. Slowly, the dissolve brings the prisoners into view, and we watch as they are given their food. It's a stunning visual sequence.
If the dissolve isn't the most used technique in this film, then it would probably have to be the pan. Several times, we watch as the camera moves down a row of prisoners. For example, we see it in the mess hall as one after another prisoner is unable to eat the food placed before him. We see it under the table when Butch tries to get rid of a knife by passing it along to the other prisoners. We also see it in the chapel on Thanksgiving Day as we see the faces of the prisoners singing a most ironic choice of song, something about "opening the gates." That's followed by another pan of Butch and the other prisoners passing guns and bullets to each other for the big prison break. We don't even notice the use of these methods nowadays, I suspect, but that's because the editing today is much more seamless much of the time.
I know I shouldn't have been distracted by this, too, but the look of the prison is spectacular. This being a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, the art direction and set decoration are impeccable. The building appears to be one of those art deco masterpieces with long angles reaching to the sky. It's pretty amazing to consider that this is a prison and not the headquarters for some multinational corporation. That's how they did it those days at MGM. Everything had to look good, even a prison.
All of the actors are good in this film. Beery was a solid actor, capable of gruffness and tenderness whenever the script called for it. Montgomery plays the new prisoner with the right mixture of naiveté and self-righteousness. And Morris gives what I consider to be the best performance. In a sense, he's the moral center of the film. Despite being a robber and a prison escapee, he seems to make right choices more times than the other prisoners do. In the end, Morris' Morgan has earned his early parole for good behavior. Morris would later become best known for starring in the Boston Blackie movie series in the 1940s, but his performance in The Big House is an early standout in his career.
Oscar Wins: Best Sound Recording and Best Writing
Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production and Best Actor (Wallace Beery)
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