Rent San Quentin (1937)
3.4 of 5 from 57 ratings
1h 7min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
Do the crime, do the time. But what happens during the long years spent behind the walls of San Quentin? The penitentiary's new yard captain wants to make those years a time of rehabilitation rather than punishment. But not everyone's buying it. "He's just another copper to me", snarls inmate Red Kennedy. Humphrey Bogart portrays Red, continuing his climb to stardom in this brisk film that's one of a string of Depression-era works combining gangster-movie elements with a Big House setting. Studio mainstay Pat O'Brien plays Steve Jameson, whose carrot-and-stick reforms begin to change Red's thinking. An inmates' strike and a scripture-quoting con who swipes a rifle are among the troubles Jameson faces. And Red is another as he reverts to his old ways and makes a violent break for freedom. - Actors:
- Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, Barton MacLane, Joe Sawyer, Veda Ann Borg, Archie Robbins, Joe King, Gordon Oliver, Garry Owen, Marc Lawrence, Emmett Vogan, William Pawley, Al Hill, Max Wagner
- Directors:
- Lloyd Bacon
- Writers:
- Peter Milne, Humphrey Cobb, Robert Tasker, John Bright, Charles Belden, Laird Doyle, Seton I. Miller, Tom Reed
- Studio:
- Warner
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Collections:
- Behind Bars: Visit These Essential Prison Films
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Reviews (1) of San Quentin
A Short Take on a Long Stretch - San Quentin review by CH
There are two musical interludes in San Quentin (1937). One of these finds Ann Sheridan on stage in a night club. Of the other - a rendition of “I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles” -, well, I shall not reveal any more except to say that here is another of those tremendous Warner Brothers movies so hard boiled that one relishes the shell cracking as these sixty-seven minutes move relentlessly to a tragic conclusion.
Ann Sheridan is sister of Bogart who, since adolescence, has fallen in with a bad lot and done time in Reformatory and gaol before landing back there for ten years. As chance has it, she finds that in her bar's audience is a man - Pat O'Brien - who becomes smitten by her just as he is about to be seconded from the Army to take charge of the gaol.
Which is quite a complication - all the more so as he is decent man who likes to see the best in all but the worst (the latter he reckons to be a distinct minority). Even so, he is up against the inmates' hierarchy, a pecking order way beyond the cage of any henhouse. Alongside many a hemmed-in scene (cell; office) there are several on a parade ground where a careless taunt can bring brawls - including one by a prisoner who has turned, vocally, to the Bible, and snaffles a gun to prove his point (blessed are the rifles, one might almost say).
Much of this is owed to a taut screenplay sharpened by another Humphrey: Humphrey Cobb. He died a few years later, and would gain wider recognition when Stanley Kubrick filmed a novel based on his Great War experience: Paths of Glory.
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