Programme notes CH 02 — Noir After Dark
The Big House
A young man killed someone while drunk at the wheel. He is sent to a prison built for half the men inside it.
The talking prison picture begins here, and nearly everything later ones repeat is already in it. There is the cell block that holds twice its capacity, the yard, the informer, the breakout planned in the mess hall. Wallace Beery is Butch, a lifer who roars and is never quite as dangerous as he sounds. Robert Montgomery is the frightened newcomer who becomes something worse than the men around him, and Chester Morris is the forger in the middle. Frances Marion won an Academy Award for the script. Listen to the boots: Douglas Shearer won another for its sound, and the men marching in step are the loudest thing in it.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- George W. Hill
- Photographed by
- Harold Wenstrom
- With
- Wallace Beery · Robert Montgomery · Lewis Stone · Claire McDowell · Karl Dane · Chester Morris
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Chester Morris made both in 1930: the convict at the centre of The Big House and the detective at the centre of The Bat Whispers. Same jaw, same clipped voice, and on opposite sides of the law.