Brute Force (1947, Jules Dassin) 79

Exactly the kind of movie you'd expect from a future blacklisted director: hard-hitting and unrepentantly liberal. Burt Lancaster and his fellow cellmates are going to bust out of prison, but there's all sorts of politics to be navigated first. I'd like to think this noirish jailbreak flick rocked 'em back in the forties, but its impact has lessened over time. Dassin probably wanted to thwart the Hays Code by giving his inmates backstories that show they aren't such bad guys; unfortunately, the flashbacks slow the film down. (It would've been really cool if all the women in the flashbacks were played by the same actress -- coupled with the sentimental music, it would've reinforced how the prison system simultaneously strips them of individuality and binds them together -- but that's obviously too anachronistic a choice.) I don't necessarily need to think these men are good guys in order to root for them; the incredibly sadistic Captain Munsey (a terrific performance from an unlikely choice: Hume Cronyn) is reason enough. And after a TV show like Oz, with its racial- and gang-warfare, a place like Westgate looks like some kind of nostalgia-derived paradise. But this is still a tough movie, even now; the murder of a stool pigeon is chilling, and the Grand Guignol climax is still shocking (albeit exciting as well). Val Lewton fans: Lewton regular Sir Lancelot appears as "Calypso" (natch), an inmate who sings all his dialogue.