Brute Force (1947) Queer Film B+

DIRECTOR: Jules Dassin.

Brute Force was one of several superb noirs director Jules Dassin made in the postwar years, alongside Thieves’ Highway, The Naked City, and Night and the City—the latter a rare, atmospheric noir set in London. Dassin had gone to England because rumors were circulating that he was about to be investigated by HUAC, the House Un‑American Activities Committee. When he returned to the United States, the worst happened: he was named by a recanting Edward Dmytryk, and his Hollywood career ended almost overnight.

An expertly told prison‑break thriller, anchored by an above‑average original screenplay by future director Richard Brooks – whose novel The Brick Foxhole had been adapted the same year into Crossfire, with screenwriter John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk shifting the book’s theme of homophobia to antisemitism for the film – taut direction by Dassin, and great work by a breakthrough star and bunch of reliable character actors.

Our LGBTQ+ character here is the hateful Captain Munsey, a sadist whose queerness is coded through voice, gesture, and obsession. He speaks in a slightly higher octave than the rest of the male cast, is the prison’s lone aesthete, and is fastidious about his appearance—there’s even a beautifully choreographed shaving sequence that borders on erotic ritual. There’s no doubt about it: Munsey is a raving homosexual, and a very nasty one. Hume Cronyn, a consummate actor, plays this queerness to the hilt.

Cronyn has portrayed several gay characters on stage and screen over the years, and even helped gay writer Arthur Laurents adapt Rope for Hitchcock. His performance here is never insulting; instead, it’s chillingly precise. We’re constantly on edge, waiting for him to summon another unfortunate inmate to his office for yet another round of torture.

But Cronyn isn’t the only magnetic presence. A superb Burt Lancaster, fresh off his star‑making turn in producer Mark Hellinger’s The Killers, returns to Hellinger territory as Joe Collins, a prisoner who can no longer endure Munsey’s brutality and begins plotting a breakout. His fellow inmates are played by a remarkable ensemble: Charles Bickford, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, Whit Bissell, and Art Smith, who—as the prison’s alcoholic doctor—gets to break the fourth wall and deliver a direct appeal to the audience as the closing credits begin to roll.

Brute Force is tough, tense, and unmistakably political, but it’s also one of the most fascinating queer‑coded noirs of the 1940s—its villain a study in repression, sadism, and the dangers of power in the wrong hands.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

William Daniels

UNIVERSAL

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