Brute Force (1947)

Gallagher: Those gates only open three times. When you come in, when you've served your time, or when you're dead!

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Spencer: You know, I was just thinking. An insurance company could go flat broke in this prison.

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Muggsy: [Looking up at the prison drawbridge] I was once married to a dame like that.
Hodges: What are you talkin' about?
Muggsy: Wonderful structure. But up in the air most of the time.

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When the Group Theater (1931-1940), the first American acting company to attempt to put the Russian Stanislavski's principles into action, disbanded many of the actors who had participated in its revolutionary realistic productions on Broadway ("Awake and Sing" "Waiting for Lefty") made their way to Hollywood in search of work;, Roman Bohnen ("Warden"), and Art Smith ("Dr. Walters") - all of whom can be seen in this film. As many of the actors in The Group were members of the Communist Party or leftist organizations, they would soon be blacklisted during the HUAC period along with the director of this film, Jules Dassin. In 1946, a year before the release of this film, Elia Kazan, one of the members of The Group Theater who named names, happened to be in Hollywood and saw a production of one of Tennessee Williams's early plays "Portrait of a Madonna" directed by Hume Cronyn - who plays the sadistic Capt. Munsey in this film. Kazan was so impressed by the work of Cronyn's wife, Jessica Tandy, that he offered her the role of Blanche Dubois in his Broadway production of "Streetcar Named Desire."
Film debut of Howard Duff.
When Munsey is beating the reporter for information on the escape, he plays the overture to Wagner's "Tannheuser". Perhaps a reference to Hitler's love of Wagner.
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