20,000 years in Sing Sing

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Movie
German title 20,000 years in Sing Sing
Original title 20,000 Years in Sing Sing
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1932
length 78 minutes
Rod
Director Michael Curtiz
script Wilson Mizner ,
Brown Holmes ,
Courtney Terrett ,
Robert Lord
production Darryl F. Zanuck ,
Raymond Griffith
music Bernhard Kaun
camera Barney McGill
cut George Amy
occupation

20,000 Years in Sing Sing is an American movie (prison film), director Michael Curtiz in 1932 for Warner Bros. has staged. It is based on the book Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing by Lewis E. Lawes , who worked as a security guard in Sing Sing for many years.

action

Tom Connors is a hard-core, wet researcher and arrogant gangster who starts his long prison sentence in the maximum security Sing Sing prison with unshakable self-confidence and appears like a star to the reporters and curious people who come to his delivery. The resistance that he then brings to the guards - he refuses to wear the prison uniform that is too large for him - is answered with severity. Tom ends up wearing only his underwear in the cold store, later in solitary confinement and in forced labor. When his fellow inmates were preparing an outbreak, he declined to participate because it was supposed to take place on a Saturday. The only person he has real feelings for is his lover Fay.

However, under the influence of the prison director, who treated him just as hard as he was fair and to whom he initially met with particularly sharp resistance, Tom gradually developed into a model prisoner, a development that abruptly ended when Fay had an accident and was struggling with death. Tom is allowed to visit her at her apartment and gives his word of honor to return to jail immediately afterwards.

At Fay, he learns that she jumped out of a moving car to get away from the intrusiveness of his criminal lawyer. When the lawyer gets violent with Tom, Fay shoots her tormentor. Tom takes the blame for what she did and flees. When he later read in the newspaper that the prison director, to whom he owed his release, has been released, he voluntarily returns to Sing Sing.

Tom is charged with his alleged murder of the lawyer and sentenced to death. Fay makes a confession, finds that Tom takes all the guilt but no faith.

Production and reception

Production history

After Warner Bros. hired Michael Curtiz to direct the film, he turned to the Fox Film Corporation , which Spencer Tracy had under contract, with a request for a loan-out . The script was based on a novel by Lewis E. Lawes, who worked as a warden at Sing Sing maximum security prison and set the plot of his bestseller there. Although the film authentically describes the atmosphere of Sing Sing - this is especially true of the opening sequence - the film also takes into account the dramaturgy of the prison films of the early 1930s rather than the realities of the American penal system. The outdoor footage was shot on the Sing Sing site in Ossining , with all the rest of the footage shot on the Warner Bros. Los Angeles studio site, many of them in decorations based on photos of the real Ossining location.

It was no coincidence that Curtiz picked Spencer Tracy as the lead actor. Tracy had already attracted the attention of the film industry as a prisoner actor in 1930 when he appeared on Broadway in the play The Last Mile , where he was discovered by John Ford and recruited to cast his breakaway film Upstream (1930). Since Warner Bros. had great success with gangster films like The Public Enemy (1931, with James Cagney ) or Little Caesar (1931, with Edward G. Robinson ) during this period , the Fox Film Corporation saw plans to produce similarly popular films , Spencer Tracy first as a performer of tough guys (gangsters), but then actually only used him twice in corresponding roles ( Quick Millions , 1931, and Disorderly Conduct , 1932). It wasn't until she was 20,000 years old in Sing Sing that Tracy came out as a tough guy again .

Theatrical release and criticism

The American premiere took place on December 24, 1932. In the opinion of the critics, the strength of the film was mainly Tracy's acting performance, who played many scenes in the role of Tom, in which he sat broodingly alone in his cell and an intensity of expression that was long remembered by the audience. After this appearance, Tracy was considered one of the best actors in American cinema.

literature

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