Tales From the Urban Jungle: Brute Force — Tales From the Urban Jungle( Blu Ray Boxset)

Here we have a double Blu Ray boxset bringing together two highly influential, important and classic examples of the noir genre. We have here 1947’s Brute Force- which finds Burt Lancaster leading up a wonderfully gritty and tense prison noir. And 1948’s The Naked City- a police procedural noir set on the streets of NYC, that went on to be a huge influence on cop cinema. Both films were helmed by Academy Award-nominated director, screenwriter, and actor Jules Dassin.

The boxset appears on Arrows Academy label- with the finished set coming with an illustrated booklet featuring new/ exclusive writing on the film by Alastair Philips, Barry Salt, Sergio Angelini, Andrew Graves, Richard Brooks and Frank Krutnik.  And Arrow really has done an impressive job on this set- with both films getting a high-definition Blu-ray (1080p) 4K restoration, and each film getting an impressive and interesting selection of extras.
 
Brute Force appeared in 1947 and was the 8th feature-length film directed by Dassin- it’s a wonderfully realized and involving prison set noir, which is both tough and moody, as well as having both depth and emotion too.  The film's lead is Burt Lancaster, who plays Joe Collins- a rebellious prisoner, who is constantly pushing against lead guard Capt. Munsey( Hume Cronyn), who is pretty, smug, and at points decidedly cruel. Lancaster/ Collins has four other cellmates, and each of these is well painted – with the stories on how they got into prison been cleverly told by the use of a calendar girl picture in the group's cell.  As the film moves on, we find out that someone close to Collins hasn’t got long to go, so he decides to break out, all building to a wonderfully intense and dramatic Finale. 
 
Lancaster is perfect as the tough, yet caring for cellmates Collins. He is surrounded by a wonderful supporting cast- Cronyn plays the smug-to-deviously unpleasant Capt, with real depth and balance. Also, very good is Roman Bohnen as the weak and worn-down Prison Warden A.J. Barnes. And from the cellmates there is a great selection of fine character actors- we have Charles Bickford who plays grizzled & long timer Gallagher, who helping the warden with information in the hope he’ll get let out early. There’s John Holt as ageing playboy gambler Spencer, and Whit Bissell as the bespeckled and nervy Tom Lister. 

The look/ feel of the prison itself is very well realized and features some great sets/ locations- the overcrowded & tight cells themselves, the sweaty and busy machine workshop, the huge and cramped dinner hall which features a balcony where the warden and guards monitor from, and the excise yard which leads out to a machine gun watch tower which looks out over the water and the bridge that leads out of the prison.  Added to all this we have a compelling and tense lead plot unfold, which has some effective/ memorable subplots- all building to create a very fulfilling and well-realized film, that stands as one of the great prison-based films of all time.

 

Moving onto this first Blu Ray disc- and we get a nice selection of extras. First up is a commentary track with historian and critic Josh Nelson- this is a very in-depth, at times decidedly scholarly and a little dry at points track. He talks about the circular flow of the film's structure, the films’ themes and how they relate to masculinity. He moves onto comment on shot set-ups, the way actors carry their roles, the films noir tropes. He moves onto discuss the films censorship problems, and much more. It’s certainly a very well researched and observed track, the thing is I felt like I was often in a film studies lesson- so it’s certainly worth a play, just be aware of its more scholarly leanings. Next, we get Nothing’s Okay, a brand-new visual essay by film historians David Cairns & Fiona Watson- this runs around the twenty-minute mark. We have  Brute Force, a personal appreciation- this runs at around nine minutes and finds screenwriter John Olson talking about the film and the impact it had on him, this is worth a play too. Lastly, we have one of the most interesting & worthy extras of this disc Burt Lancaster: The Film Noir Years- this runs nearing the forty-minute mark, and it finds Lancaster’s biographer Kate Buford. She goes right way back to before he was an actor- with his time working as an acrobat in travelling shows, and his time in Europe around the war. She moves onto discuss his early Noir roles, the production company he set up, and how both of these helped him grow and develop as an actor. All in all, a great featurette.
 
 

 

The Naked City appeared in 1948 a year after Brute Force, and the film stepped away from prison life for a classy example of the police procedural noir. Set in New York City, on one hot and sticky summer- it followed a murder investigation over several days, utilizing documentary-like footage of various areas of the city, and a New York wise-guy voice over.

The film featured in its lead respected character actor Barry Fitzgerald- who plays seasoned, jovial-yet-clever Irish American cop Lt. Dan Muldoon, he’s joined by fresh-faced- though hard-working rooky cop Jimmy Halloran(Donny Taylor). The pair are investigating the murder of a glamorous young woman who is found murdered in her bath- and we follow the case from her body first been discovered, to the killer been caught in the films dramatic Brooklyn Bridge set finale.

The film unfolds in a day-by-day setting, with us seeing the sun coming up and going down on the city of a thousand stories. It blends together taut suspect interviews, down-on-the-street investigation, and towards the end a fairly tense on foot chase- wrapped around this we get great snapshots of the city’s 1950’s streets and New Yorkers going about their day.  Both Fitzgerald and Taylor bouncing off each other nicely-Fitzgerald with experience and cunning, and Taylor with his wanting to impress enthusiasm, which sometimes gets him in trouble. The pair are surrounded by a largely good-to-great supporting- we have Howard Duff as the slick, suited and booted, though not to be trusted businessman Frank Niles. There’s Dorothy Hart playing the murder victims 
model friend Ruth Morrison, and later on we have Ted de Corsia as the punchy and shifty wrester Willy Garzah.
 
The film certainly shows you were a lot of the now very familiar cop drama/ police investigation tropes first appeared- and the whole story unfolds in a suitable twisting and turning manner, with the whole who-done-it plotting done well. The film has a runtime at coming on for one hour and forty minutes, and at points, things did drag a little, but that may be down to me not be the biggest fan of more office/ interview set noir. But there’s no doubt this is a classic example of police procedural noir.
 
Moving onto this second disc, and once again we have a good selection of extras. First up we have a commentary track from historian and critic David Cairns, who is joined by actors Steven McNicoll and Francesca Dymond- and this is a very original/ distinctive take on the commentary form, as it runs much like a radio show- as we have Cairns discussing the film, it’s production, and influences/ impact. Around him, McNicoll and Dymond impressively recreate audio snippets from the period- be it newsreels, other film trailers, on-street banter, etc. It does take a few minutes to get used to this take on making a commentary track, but soon you do- and I must say it was rather rewarding & captivating. Cairn’s has come up with wonderful stories and background relating to the creation of the film, and he covers a lot of ground. The actors' additions are done carefully and cleverly, never becoming too intrusive- but instead really adding depth and layers to the track. I can most certainly see myself replaying this several times, a great and very original track.
Next, we get The Pulse of the City- a sixteen-minute visual from historian and critic Eloise Ross. We have New York and The Naked City- this runs thirty-nine minutes and finds New York critic Amy Taubin giving a personalized history of NYC in cinema.  We have a film festival onstage interview session with Jules Dassin just before he passed in the early 2000s, this runs at the fifty-two-minute mark. There’s The Hollywood Ten- a fourteen-minute doc from 1950 regarding ten filmmakers blacklisted from Hollywood for their refusal to name names before the House Un-American.
 

All in all, this a wonderfully classy and thorough reissue of these two important and highly influential examples of cinematic noir.  A release that will be of interest to both those familiar with the genre, as well as those wanting to get into and understand the noir genre- another great, great boxset from the folks at Arrow.