evanston_dad One of the earliest prison break movies and a Best Picture nominee from the 1929-30 award year at the Academy Awards."The Big House" suffers from lack of focus. Wallace Beery, as a hardened inmate, received the Best Actor Oscar nomination, but the film is really much more about Robert Montgomery, newly incarcerated and navigating the ins and outs of prison life, until it's no longer about him and is instead about Chester Morris, who escapes and falls in love with Montgomery's sister before being captured and sent back to the slammer. The film's money shot is a big shoot out at the end, during which all of the principal characters die. This grim, gritty stuff distinguishes the film as pre-Code, and it's the movie's pre-Code status that allows it to get away with the moral ambiguity in not really having good guys and bad guys and making the audience unsure of who it's supposed to be rooting for.Being an early sound film, "The Big House" is almost by definition uneven, since filmmakers were trying to figure out what movies should look and sound like with the addition of the new medium. But many clearly thought Douglas Shearer, brother of Norma and head of the MGM sound department at the time, handled sound well, as this film has the distinction of being the very first winner of the Sound Recording Oscar. Workhorse screenwriter Frances Marion also won an Oscar for Best Writing, in a year that saw her go up against the formidable competition of "All Quiet on the Western Front" no less.Grade: B

bkoganbing Even after 77 years, The Big House is still the grand daddy of all prison films. Though films like Shawshank Redemption and a personal favorite of mine, Brubaker, with no Code restrictions can be a lot more graphic, still The Big House will shock as well as entertain.Wallace Beery got a Best Actor nomination for being hardened killer Butch Schmidt who's a lifer in the state penitentiary. He and cell mate Chester Morris have a new man in their little abode in the person of a young Robert Montgomery. Montgomery's only a kid, but he's done a man size crime of manslaughter in a vehicular homicide where he was no doubt good and sloshed on prohibition rotgut. Montgomery is a weakling in a place where that's not a good thing.All the clichés about prison films really do start here, culminating in the final crash-out where a whole lot of people get themselves killed. It's a scene well staged, very similar to the breakout in Brute Force.As the story progresses you'll see plot elements from Brute Force and from Warner Brothers Each Dawn I Die. The cast does a marvelous job and that also includes Lewis Stone as a Judge Hardy like warden.If you like prison films, this one's the grand daddy of them all.

Neil Doyle So many high quality prison melodramas have been on the screen in the last few decades that this one--made in 1930--has to be reviewed in the context of its time. As such, it's a well-written, powerful study of men behind bars, none of whom observes a code of conduct likely to make them good material for rehabilitation.CHESTER MORRIS is a forger, WALLACE BEERY is a thick-necked bullying murderer and ROBERT MONTGOMERY is a comparative "innocent" with a drunken manslaughter charge against him. They share the same cell and are soon involved in bickering and double-crosses that make up most of the plot contrivances that lead to a prison break where all hell breaks loose. Within the conventions of crime melodramas, this one maintains passable interest today although it lacks the taut tension of more modern prison dramas.Filmed when sound in film was only two years old, there is virtually no background music at all--a factor which dates the film's style and gives it a static quality during moments where music would have raised the drama to a higher pitch.CHESTER MORRIS, an interesting actor, is likable and energetic as the man who walks out of prison a free man after helping to contain the riot. ROBERT MONTGOMERY does a fine job as the coward who breaks under the stress of having betrayed another prisoner and LEWIS STONE does a good turn as the warden.Overall, it's better than average for this sort of thing--well paced despite the lack of background music to emphasize the drama--and worth watching for the performances. Beery is especially good and deserved his Best Actor nomination. Chester Morris is equally impressive in the top-billed assignment, forceful and convincing all the way in a showy role.But I have to conclude that Warner Bros. seemed to have a better handle than MGM on this sort of tough, stark material. Raoul Walsh's WHITE HEAT ('49)with James Cagney is the best example.

angelcitygal I saw "The Big House" last night as part of Turner Classic Movies' tribute to Frances Marion, the great female screenwriter. Marion became the first woman to win an Academy Award for screenwriting for her work on this film."The Big House" is a fascinating character study, showing how three very different men deal with being imprisoned. Butch (Wallace Beery) lords over all of the men with a knife and threats of violence. John Morgan (Chester Morris) is smart enough to befriend Butch and his crew, but keeps his own set of values. Newcomer Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery) is terrified of prison and eventually turns "rat" in hopes of being released.The film also infers that the public at large is partly to blame for the discontent (and eventual unrest) within the prison: at one moment, the head warden says something to the effect of the public wanting to put criminals in prison, but not wanting to spend the money to build more prisons to accommodate them. This is issue is still debated to this day.I also found the portrayal of the lone female character, Anne Marlowe (Kent's sister, played by Leila Hyams), very refreshing and unexpected. Instead of the crying, simpering type we might expect in a prison movie, we are given a smart and compassionate woman who owns her own business.All of the actors gave excellent, realistic performances and Frances Marion's screenplay was well-deserving of the accolades it received. The insight and sensitivity that she used to write about these characters and this place surpasses most of the scripts written by men on the same subject.