Marval Movie

We see a far off island in the distance and a man walks towards the edge of the dock he says that there is a man leaving the island today, that the man "has spent the last forty years of his life in solitary confinement", "I wrote a book about that man".

The next scene is a train where convicts are being transported, all shackled up and sweating intensely due to the heat of the furriness.  One prisoner puts his hand in his hat, stands up and punches out the nearby window, all the prisoners cheer and applaud but the prisoner just sits back down with a straight blank face.

This prisoner is named Robert Stroud a convicted felon who has been transferred to Leavenworth prison for the murder of a man who allegedly beat up a prostitute (one of his friends), he is sentenced to 9 years in prison.

When one thinks of prison movies one often immediately thinks of the Shawshank Redemption, while I am the last person on earth to say that The Shawshank Redemption isn't a great movie I do theories that that movie does steal some of the thunder from other deserving movies.  I first came across this movie one dull night while watching TV and I couldn't stop watching and after acquiring it on DVD it quickly soured to one of my favorite films.  

While Stround is in prison he shows bad attitude and does not mix with the other prisoners.  He yells at one prisoner for holding a picture of his mother and later gets into a fight with another prisoners for mentioning his mother.

After a few months of isolation one of the guards suggests to the warden that he should keep Stroud in permanent isolation, but warden Shoemaker says "he'll shape up".  While later his mother comes in for a visit but being that its a Saturday she cant see him so a basket of fruit is left in his cell with a letter, Stroud is angry at the guard and touches him which means that he has to put him on report, which means that he cant get any visitors.  Later while eating dinner he goes and talks to the guard and asks him not to put him on report but the guard feeling zero sympathy tells him that he's already on report and to sit down, Stroud insults him, they rough house and Stroud kills him with a stab in the back, with what I don't know a fork or knife from when he was eating dinner.

After The guard is pronounced dead warden Shoemaker sees Stroud in confinement and tells him that he'll see him hang for what hes done.  Later Stroud sentence is to sentenced to solitary confinement until hanged by the neck until dead, but Strouds mother wont let it happen and get a petition started and works her way through the offices of Washington and eventually saves her son.

Stroud feels happy and cocky but then Shoemaker comes in with a telegram reading that being that he wont be hanged it means that he will be in the cell indefinably.  For the rest of his life he will be in the cell, all alone, not allowed to work or socialize with other prisoners, but Stroud is defiant and says he wont give Shoemaker the satisfaction of whimpering, and Shoemaker says that he'll never forget him.

We then see Stroud live out what might be a year, a month or fourteen weeks as he goes through the motions of isolation and routine and the horror of knowing with one hundred percent certainty whats coming next. but then there's the saving factor.  While Stroud is going through his exercise in the heavy rain a branch falls in the yard and in that nest is a baby sparrow and Stroud picks it up and takes into his cell and nurses it.

He feeds and cares for the baby sparrow and even teaches it to fly, showing compaction and love and after hes allowed to keep the bird by the new warden other prisoners get their own Canaries and after one prisoner gets bore with theirs he gives them to Stroud and he then asks for the guards bottle which he crafts into a water bowl for the birds, then from an apple box he takes the spare glass shard and carves all the pieces into a cage for his Canaries.

Stroud continues this with the cycle of love that the Canaries follow but then they stop singing.  The Canaries are sick with a mysterious disease with no known cure Stroud wont let this happen, getting some chemicals from his mother he experiments endlessly with no prior knowledge of what chemicals do to birds and but luck, skill or chance he figures out the cure and saves the birds.

Stroud later goes on to do even greater work after he is given a microscope as a gift, he writes a book about different diseases and illnesses of birds that would go on to save millions of poultry chickens.             

Robert Stroud is played by Burt Lancaster, one of the most classic and brilliant of the golden age of actors, nearly all of his lines have a poetic twang that he puts on the so that the obrolan seems typically Lancaster.  Lancaster always had charisma and this is no exception as the defiant to the end prisoner who wont bent for anyone.  

The film is directed by John Frankenheimer who would worked with Lancaster on about three other films after this so the two work well together.  Frankenheimer has a Hitchcock style to his directing with his use of montages and interesting angles, like the film he is very underrated.  

I do not have much of an eye for makeup but this seems to some of the best make up that I've ever seen in a film that came out in 1962, the make up is naturalistic and subtle that show the characters aging over time, becoming withered and grey haired.  But maybe an expert could look at it and give me a list of flaws.

This is a fictional portrayal of Robert Stroud, the real Robert Stroud was nowhere near as hansom as Burt Lancaster he was thin and ugly and he had to be but on constant suicide watch because of his many attempts  of suicide.  He also was described as a jerk and would never say anything nice this doesn't bother me, this is a movie and I get so sucked in to this performance and portrayal that I can accept that it inst real.

Birdman of Alcatraz shows what the human spirit can accomplish even behind bars, it is bitter sweet from beginning to end.  The acting sentimental, the story is intriguing and the material is respected and well handled even if some is stretched and exaggerated those points are sweet and give me hope in dark times.