Brute Force (1947)

Joe Collins: [Spencer is wavering about whether to join in with Joe's escape plan] Spencer. In or out? No guarantees go with this break. It's all or nothing. But you've gotta' make up your mind now. Now! Either way, no hard feelings.
Spencer: [after long, thoughtful pause] With you, Joe. I'll play along.
Robert 'Soldier' Becker: I never thought different.
Spencer: Neither did I.

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Joe Collins: [Trying to convince Gallagher that escape from the prison is possible, in spite of the fact that they both realize that in the past, somewhat misguided inmates have attempted to do so] Look, Gallagher, I know this drum's full of crackpots. One convict's gonna' buy his way out, another knows the governor's cousin. A third guy's even gonna' float out in a homemade balloon. But I'm not buyin' any pipe dreams. It can be done. It's been done before, and it'll be done again. It can be done here... by us.
Gallagher: Collins, if I ever put in with anybody, it'll be with you.

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Cora Lister: [Flashback scene: Tom Lister is in his prison cell, recalling how he had given his wife Cora an exquisite fur coat] Tom... oh, Tom! It's the most beautiful thing in the whole world!
Tom Lister: It belongs on you.
Cora Lister: [Putting the coat on and admiring herself dreamily in the mirror] It makes me feel so... I don't know... like I was "somebody." Oh, Tom...
Cora Lister: [Suddenly coming to her senses] Where'd you get it? Where'd the money come from? Where'd you get it!
Tom Lister: Cora, I stole the money. I juggled the books and took three thousand dollars.
Cora Lister: You? You STOLE? Why?
Tom Lister: Darling, the way we were going, you wanting things - things you ought to have - and me strapped all the time... we were heading for a split-up. Don't you see? I just had to do it.
Cora Lister: All my life, the one thing I've really wanted is a fur coat. I CAN'T give it up. I WON'T, Tom!
Tom Lister: No, darling...
Cora Lister: But what if something should happen?
Tom Lister: Nothing that happens could matter, unless I lost you...
[Loud, ominous knocking on door is heard, returning the scene back to Tom's prison cell]

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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."
Former Warner Bros. producer Mark Hellinger, who had started his own independent production unit at Universal-International, wanted Wayne Morris to star in his first picture, The Killers. Warners wouldn't loan Morris out, so Hellinger cast Burt Lancaster, who had made his motion picture debut in "The Killers".
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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