Prisoners pretty much come and go as they please. A friendly farm woman makes the trustees on the work gang donuts. Girlfriends visit their boyfriends in jail as if it was dance night at the local college. All threatened to end when someone escapes. Not a very realistic men's prison film, especially coming from the studio that you could count on realism from, Warner Brothers. The same here, MGM made "The Big House" starring Wallace Beery which one a lot of acclaim and an Academy Award nomination. This creaky programmer, directed by the great Mervyn Leroy, is so silly in its story that it's more comparable to Laurel and Hardy's "Pardon Us" and Wheeler and Woolsey's "Hold Em' Jail".
It is easy to forgive films from 1929 and 1930 for their creakiness due to research being done on improving early sound techniques, but it is impossible to forgive a film that takes on a serious subject treats it in a frivolous light. Bernice Claire visits boyfriend Conrad Nagel, and while alone in a barn is all of a sudden held hostage by the escaped prisoner, hiding nearby with a weapon.
Just half an hour before, a group of prisoners were sitting around the kitchen of farm woman Blanche Friderici waiting for the donuts to be completed frying. This does have some decent dialogue and the actors are not speaking at a snail's pace, so it's obvious that there had been progress in filmmaking and having movies truly have motion. But considering the pedigree behind the film, this one truly deserves to be locked up rather than have the audience held prisoner by fugitives from a chain gang.
It is easy to forgive films from 1929 and 1930 for their creakiness due to research being done on improving early sound techniques, but it is impossible to forgive a film that takes on a serious subject treats it in a frivolous light. Bernice Claire visits boyfriend Conrad Nagel, and while alone in a barn is all of a sudden held hostage by the escaped prisoner, hiding nearby with a weapon.
Just half an hour before, a group of prisoners were sitting around the kitchen of farm woman Blanche Friderici waiting for the donuts to be completed frying. This does have some decent dialogue and the actors are not speaking at a snail's pace, so it's obvious that there had been progress in filmmaking and having movies truly have motion. But considering the pedigree behind the film, this one truly deserves to be locked up rather than have the audience held prisoner by fugitives from a chain gang.