Rent The Criminal Code (1930)

Jute and Justice - The Criminal Code review by CH

The film's title is adroit, applying to lawyer and villain alike. One holds a stout volume which encapsulates the Law; the other is beholden to that ad hoc rule, not set down in print, by which nobody "squeals" to the authorities about another of the fraternity's misdemeanours.

Such is the mainspring of this early film by Howard Hawks, from a play by Martin Flavin. Phillips Holmes has killed a man whom he thought reaching for a gun in a speakeasy and is betrayed by a woman who swiftly departs the scene, leaving him to be arraigned for murder, in fact manslaughter, and consigned to the slammer for a decade at the behest of a politically ambitious DA, Walter Huston.

With a jump of six years, we find him in a cell scarcely better than the prison's health-shattering jute mill where he toils by day. No longer is he suave, but breaking down, his mother's telegrammed death bringing scant sympathy from his two cellmates, one of whom is Boris Karloff near the start of a career which would find that rigid face in demand. As for the other occupant, he is bitter at the betrayal which brought him back to gaol after one illicit beer while on parole. Plot enough, you might think, and that is already but part of it; what's more, a new Warden arrives and is none other than the DA who sent Holmes down and has not gained State office. This time around, he takes aboard the suggestion that Holmes become his factotum. Everthing looks brighter for him, especially when Huston's daughter (Constance Cummings) becomes smitten.

This world of light and shade - real and metaphorical - is caught well by cinematographer James Wong Howe as the suspense becomes physically palpable, vertiably neck-tightrning, when all turns upon Holmes's dilemma: after a wonderfully-staged breakout attempt, will he squeal about the murder which took place in an adjunct to Huston's office? Watch the scenes with him in solitary at yout peril. Even so, Holmes and Constance Cummings do not have the screen presence displayed by many others in a cast whose work is as dialogue driven as any of the work for which Hawks would become better known - whether, here, the upright but self-seeking tones of Huston or the slang of Karloff and his cronies.

Startling to think that to watch this is to look across ninety-five years at something which is as fresh as ever. And among the extras on the disc is one which sets side by side scenes from it with counterparts not only from Hollywood remakes but foreign incarnations of a story which it would be interesting to see again on stage - difficult though it might be to put out of mind the expressionistic hues of this film, which should be better known.