Directed by Jules Dassin • 1947 • United States
Starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford
As hard-hitting as its title, BRUTE FORCE was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey (a riveting Hume Cronyn). Only Collins’s dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey’s chains? Matter-of-fact and ferocious, BRUTE FORCE builds to an explosive climax that shows the lengths men will go to when fighting for their freedom.
Up Next in Noir and the Blacklist
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Crossfire
Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1947 • United States
Starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert RyanThis gritty film noir made history as the first Hollywood film to confront antisemitism. Three of the era’s most celebrated Roberts—Young, Mitchum, and Ryan—star in the hard-hitting tale of a pol...
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Intruder in the Dust
Directed by Clarence Brown • 1949 • United States
Starring David Brian, Juano Hernández, Claude Jarman Jr.One of the first major Hollywood films to deal seriously and sensitively with the subject of racial injustice, this landmark adaptation of the novel by William Faulkner features a towering ...
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Obsession
Directed by Edward Dmytryk • 1949 • United Kingdom
Starring Robert Newton, Sally Gray, Naunton WayneThe first film director Edward Dmytryk made in England after being blacklisted from Hollywood is a wittily inventive blend of black comedy and suspense in which the investigation by a Scotland Ya...
