John Frankenheimer (1962)

John Frankenheimer was a fruitfully busy film-maker in the first years of the 1960s and 1962 was the high point of his activity.  In the course of the year, three Frankenheimer pictures were released:  All Fall Down, The Manchurian Candidate and, sandwiched between them, the biographical Birdman of Alcatraz, the story of Robert Stroud.   Born in 1890, Stroud was first imprisoned, for manslaughter, in 1909.  He was sentenced for twelve years; in 1912 the sentence was extended by six months because of acts of violence he committed as a prisoner (and other bad behaviour).  He was transferred to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas when, in March 1916, in one of his fits of uncontrollable anger, Stroud stabbed to death a prison guard.  He was sentenced to death and ordered to await his execution in solitary confinement.  After years of legal wrangling, including two retrials, the sentence was confirmed in 1920, at which point Stroud’s mother appealed direct to President Woodrow Wilson and his wife.  The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.  The Leavenworth warden T W Morgan, disapproving of the reprieve, ordered that Stroud remain segregated from other prisoners for the duration of the sentence.   He was transferred from Leavenworth to Alcatraz in 1942, where he was segregated for a further six years then confined to a hospital wing for the next eleven.   In 1959 he was moved again, to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.  In 1963, a young lawyer called Richard English, who had been part of John Kennedy’s presidential campaign three years previously, launched a campaign for Stroud’s release, which included meetings with senior officials of the Kennedy administration.  Robert Stroud died in prison on 21 November 1963, the day before the assassination of JFK and more than fifty-four years after he was first incarcerated.  According to Wikipedia (from which that potted biography derives), Stroud wasn’t allowed even to watch the film based on his life.

It was during his long stint at Leavenworth that Stroud began to keep and breed birds, and teach himself ornithology.  (He wrote books on the subject and, on his death, some of his possessions were passed, via Richard English, to the Audubon Society.)    Perhaps Stroud’s sobriquet reflects simply that ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ is snappier than ‘Birdman of Leavenworth’ – but it may mean something more.  Stroud wasn’t permitted to keep pets at Alcatraz so the title could be seen as an expression of the harshness of his punishment.   The film’s screenplay by Guy Trosper, based on the book of the same name by Thomas Gaddis (who appears as a character in the picture), is very sketchy on the character of Stroud.  While in Leavenworth, he’s visited by a bird-loving widow, with whom he agrees to go into business partnership (she markets his bird remedies) and whom he later marries, causing an irreparable rift with his mother.  It’s less than clear to what extent Frankenheimer and Trosper see Stroud’s very close relationship with his mother as a source of his sociopathic tendencies – or whether we’re supposed to believe (as it appears) that his propensity for violence vanished from the moment Stroud adopted his first bird in Leavenworth.   Birdman of Alcatraz is too long anyway (143 minutes) and much too long given the increasingly shallow psychological treatment of its subject.  There are a few ridiculous moments (as when someone is asked to look at one of Stroud’s early manuscripts and pronounces it very good before he can have read two sentences).  But within these (considerable) limits, Birdman is very well acted, in the main parts and the smaller ones, and sensitively directed by Frankenheimer.

Burt Lancaster is such a strong physical presence that he can seem nearly archetypal.  As Stroud, Lancaster, when he’s looking at the camera, is often impressive (and he ages well).  He’s more surprisingly expressive in gently talking with and handling the birds.  Even if the passages describing the early development of Stroud’s love for the creatures tend to be a little easily heartwarming, they work well as natural history documentary – a sequence in which an egg hatches is especially strong – fortified by the impact on the protagonist.  When Lancaster speaks, though, you can, as usual, hear the actor thinking how to say the line.  And when he’s speaking the clumsy, plea-for-justice lines of the script, there’s no character at all – the performer is merely delivering a social commentary.  But while you’re left in little doubt that the people who made Birdman in Alcatraz think Stroud’s unending imprisonment outrageous, Frankenheimer and his actors deserve a lot of credit for giving the penitentiary officials more dimensions than you’d expect from a polemic about the viciousness of prison as an institution (especially if, as in my case, you’d seen Cool Hand Luke three days earlier).   This is particularly true of Karl Malden as the prisoner governor (renamed Howard Shoemaker) and two of the guards.  It’s a very strong moment when one of these guards, played by Neville Brand, gets angry with Stroud who, he says, never says thank you for anything.  The remark hits home and the pair develop a relationship of mutual respect verging on affection.   And the guard whom Stroud kills (the actor appears to be uncredited) is frighteningly convincing.   When Stroud gets mad, this man has real fear in his eyes but he knows he has to stick to the rules.

As another prisoner, Telly Savalas seems over the top at first but you come to realise that he’s not – his playing is nuanced and empathetic.  I also thought initially that Thelma Ritter was miscast as the gallant Mrs Stroud:  the mother’s exchange with Mrs Wilson (Adrienne Marden), in which she pleads with the First Lady for her son’s life, seems phony.  But Thelma Ritter is fearless in showing Mrs Stroud’s extreme possessiveness as the other side of the coin whose obverse is loyal courage.  It’s not surprising that the significant female roles are few here but Betty Field does very well as the woman Stroud marries – there’s a lovely connection between her and Lancaster in their first scene together.  The reliable Edmond O’Brien is good as Thomas Gaddis.  There are times when Elmer Bernstein’s music is required to do more than should be expected of any dramatic score but it’s admirably resourceful.   The cinematography is by Burnett Guffey.

22 April 2010