OVP: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

Film: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Neville Brand, Betty Field, Telly Savalas
Director: John Frankenheimer
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actor-Burt Lancaster, Supporting Actor-Telly Savalas, Supporting Actress-Thelma Ritter, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but it never stops being true: biopics are rarely successfully executed onscreen, particularly from the aspect of a screenplay.  The films that make it to the screen are of famous people, frequently famous people who are living or who have people who know their life and have admiration for their lives.  As a result, to avoid libel, we get whitewashed instances of a person onscreen being far more puritanical and noble than they actually were in real-life.  Still, though, it's hard to remember a time this was more true than in Birdman of Alcatraz, the sort of film that literally takes a murderer and turns him into a martyr.  The film, from acclaimed-director John Frankenheimer, has to be one of the most bloated endeavors I've seen from such a usually polished director, and I left disappointed and actually hoping for a remake.

(Spoilers Ahead) The reason for this is that there's actually an interesting story here.  Robert Stroud (Lancaster) is a man who was convicted of murder, avoided the death penalty, and then spent decades of his life in solitary confinement.  He doesn't go mad during this time, though, but instead becomes an ornithologist of sorts, keeping dozens of birds in his jail cell, studying them, and eventually becoming quite noted in the scientific community.  He eventually gets to leave Alcatraz, which is the ending of the film, meeting his biographer.

In the middle, though, he ends up being the kindest, gentlest of convicts that you ever did meet.  Fellow inmates of Stroud's later complained that Frankenheimer and Lancaster owed them an apology for the sugarcoating of a convicted murderer.  Played by Lancaster he becomes a struggling Mr. Smith of the penal system.  It doesn't help matter that Lancaster, who is admittedly a fine actor, can't really damp down his stage-actor sensibilities.  He reads every line from Stroud like he's doing the final act of King Lear, earnest and tough grit and poise.  It's impossible to imagine an inmate with Stroud's roots becoming so instantly posh and sensitive, and yet that's what Lancaster does to him.  Even worse is the way that Karl Malden, the prison's warden, is made out to be the villain of the tale.  Malden, who also has that noble-actor thing down pat, can't help but feel extremely wooden in the role, seeming like someone who must always be at his absolutely most perturbed, never allowing for any sort of sympathy for Stroud, even though in the film he's basically a saint.

The film won four Oscar nominations, with the Cinematography actually being quite good in the film-the lighting is very strong in certain scenes, and it helps that Burnett Guffey (the man who won an Oscar for lensing Lancaster a decade earlier in From Here to Eternity) knows when his big moments to shine (like the prison break and the light-filled scene on Fisherman's Wharf) are, and he takes them.  The actors, though, are all playing rough facsimiles of their cliched selves.  Lancaster doesn't know how to temper his performance, so his Stroud is only strong when he's doing something virile and noble, and not when he's trying to show any sort of shading.  Telly Savalas is scene-stealing, and I get where this nomination came from (he's showy in a way that no one else is), but unnecessary to the plot and ultimately pretty two-dimensional, even for someone whom the script demands be a simpleton.  Weirdest of all is Thelma Ritter, a supporting actress par excellence, who is given a massively BAIT-y role (hence the nomination, her sixth), but does nothing with it.  She's supposed to be the mother-from-hell, but in reality she underplays all but her final scene, and there's little to nothing in this performance, and the script doesn't care about her enough to project onto her.  Is she jealous, a publicity hound, or part of an Oedipal situation we can't understand since it's 1962?  It's hard to say, and Ritter doesn't play it as any.

All-in-all, then, this is a disappointing film.  There's too many talented names attached for it not to succeed on occasion, but when you have Burt Lancaster, Thelma Ritter, and John Frankenheimer together you should do better than just succeed on occasion.  If you've seen it, weigh in-are you as underwhelmed as I am?  And if you haven't seen it, at least let me hear your favorite performances from the frequently Oscar-cited Lancaster and Ritter.