As a part of Colgate University’s yearly Ryan Family Film Series, a double feature of American films was screened: “Brute Force” (1947), directed by Jules Dassin, followed by “Shock Corridor” (1963), directed by Samuel Fuller. The former is a standard prison break film, while the latter follows a reporter who infiltrates an asylum to solve the murder of one of its patients. Both films were made at significantly different points in American history, yet their presentation as companion pieces begets a question concerning the joint significance of the two, especially considering the second film somewhat historically segues from the first. Besides the films being landmarks of both film and American history, they each present a unique form of historical commentary.
“Brute Force” is, in its most raw form, a propaganda film. Made soon after World War II, it triumphantly yet soberly celebrates the Allied triumph over fascist Germany. This, of course, is all allegorical. The movie takes place inside an American prison where the men inside wage war against the head guard, Munsey, who aims to place the entire prison under his sadistic iron fist (sounds like anyone you know?). The movie is beautifully done, showcasing the sacrifice and unity it takes to take down one cruel despot despite the differences inherent in the emboldened freedom fighters. It is post-war and patriotic in its tone and messaging.
The second half of the double feature, “Shock Corridor,” looks at American life through a much more critical lens. It follows an enterprising reporter, Johnny Barrett, who fakes a sexual obsession with his sister (who is actually his wife), in order to enter an asylum where he intends to interview three witnesses to a recent murder. In solving the murder, Barrett hopes to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning story to solve the financial troubles that force his wife to work as an exotic dancer. Barrett is, for the purposes of the film, the ideal American, willing to dive to the bottom of a toxic lake in hopes of retrieving something that could bring him money and recognition. But in submerging himself so deeply, Barrett finds himself in over his head. The three witnesses he must interview to solve the murder consist of a disgraced communist, a nuclear scientist and one of the first Black men who failed to be integrated into an American school system due to the nation’s prejudice. The three psychiatric patients are witnesses but also victims of the American experiment that has been barreling forward even faster since World War II. An experiment that, due to its contradictions, prejudice and brutality, appears on the verge of collapse.
We see this experiment take the form of the corridor of an asylum where all of its inhabitants mingle in ways that range from mildly friendly to outright brutal, all whilst Barrett loses a grip on his own sanity as he attempts to maneuver himself in this strange new world. The film’s American allegory is seen in the seemingly insignificant comic relief character, Pagliacci, named after a character from a late 19th-century Italian opera that exists as one of the progenitors of the sad clown paradox. Pagliacci is a character who is forced to be a spectacle, despite his inner suffering and despondency, much like many of the asylum inmates as well as many Americans.
It seems strange, then, to have such a critical analysis of America follow such a celebration of the same nation on a double bill, though I think their connections are more palpable than you might think. Considering the immense sacrifice shown to us in “Brute Force” that allowed for the strange cultivation of American life we see in “Shock Corridor,” one crux of global destiny is followed by domestic turmoil and exploitative cruelty. Just as the former stripped down America’s wartime efforts to its most visceral form, so too does the latter expose American life to the same. We are then left with questions of the legitimacy of the American dream that has been steering us thus far. Both Fuller and Dassin bring a unique American-Jewish perspective in these beautiful and unmarred critiques of our nation’s strange, ever-bleeding place in the world.
