Word: jailbirds
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Night Watch. "I feel fine for the first time in my life," says the baby-faced young jailbird, Gaspard. "It is wonderful to be with men like you." The men it is wonderful to be with are four fellow inmates at Paris' sprawling La Santé prison. They eye Gaspard with suspicion. He seems too soft, too ready to please. He is accused of attempting to kill the wife who supported him while he dallied with her teenage sister. Can this fancy boy be trusted? His cell mates decide to risk it, and cut Gaspard in on their plan...
...chopped-liver-on-wry dialogue is a deadpan delight. And Danny Meehan, as Fanny's unrequited lover and faithful friend, makes a dreary role cheery just by standing on his head to whistle. Sydney Chaplin has a cheerlessly unwritten part as Nicky Arnstein, the gambler and jailbird whom Fanny loves, marries, overmanages, and loses. It scarcely helps that Chaplin lackadaisically stands around in a tuxedo most of the evening looking like a rented escort at the wrong address...
...Guilty affects to study the elusive nature of truth and justice, but it is really just a peep show with pretensions. Tony Perkins, cast as an artist-composer-jailbird, speaks French in this melodrama directed by Andre Cayatte (Tomorrow Is My Turn). He does little else to embellish this unsavory little film...
Finally, a Portuguese jailbird named Celestino Madeiros, who had just appealed his own conviction for murder, passed a note to a prison guard: "I hear by confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti was not in said crime...
...Stretch, Sellers plays a "wide boy" (small-time crook) who has a chance to "hoist . . . a coupla million nicker" (steal ?2,000,000) but unfortunately finds himself "in boob" (in jail). Fortunately, Jailbird Sellers inhabits a gilded cage that contains a radio, a wine cellar, a fully equipped kitchen, a cuckoo clock, an amiable tabby. Milk and papers are delivered every morning by the local tradesmen. The turnkey knocks timidly before entering and walks the cat upon request. Morning massage by a cellmate is followed by classes in basket weaving, fretwork and (when the warden looks the other way) safe...