Word: prisoners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...mate upon arrival. The stacked rows upon rows of cells stretching up to the roof, the paint on the cell bars chipping away to expose the constraining iron underneath, the echoing cacophony of voices rebounding against the unadorned walls of the block. The mere sights and sounds of the prison would be sufficient to inject a generous dose of raw terror into even the most jaded newcomers. The foregoing, needless to say, has only served as a fitting warm-up for the assorted misfits and ne'er-do-wells who populate the inside world of those paying back the proverbial...
...narrative starts off on a conventional note. The camera follows a prison guard into the inner confines of the penitentiary, enabling Young to run through a quick introduction of the various inmates around whom the plot centers. Miguel Pinero fills his script with the street-wise argot of Harlem and the South Bronx that gives the dialogue an authentic ring. The effective color and accuracy of the ghetto-flavored jive should hardly come as a surprise; Pinero owes this ability to evoke a particular brand of slang to his own experience as an inmate at Sing Sing Prison. The crisp...
...Pinero seems to have made few concessions to the different demands of the film medium in preparing the screenplay. In short, the first 15 minutes of the movie suggest a play that has been filmed rather than one that has been adapted for the screen. The evocation of a prison atmosphere takes priority over the proper development of a suitable movie plot...
...means gone. Last week as the two women received congratulations from friends and supporters, three more victims of the Irish Republican Army's Provisional unit were being buried: a prison guard who was machine-gunned in his car, a school-bus driver who was shot to death as he stopped on his route, and a woman private in the Ulster Defence Regiment, who was gunned down in her mobile home. The third group of attackers even turned their guns on their victim's terrified three-year-old daughter, sending bullets through the Teddy bear she was holding...
Bate has ignored none of these peculiarities, but what fascinates him is Johnson's temperament. By "storming the main gate of experience," Bate writes in a typically vigorous formulation, Johnson managed to resist his own failings and acquire mastery over "the dark, bewildered prison house of the isolated subjective self." His life was a series of afflictions: childhood illnesses that left him half deaf and half blind, recurrent episodes of near insanity, a career at Oxford that ended after a year because he could no longer afford the tuition, marriage to a woman 20 years his senior who died...