THE GLASS HOUSE
US, 1972, 91 minutes, Colour.
Vic Morrow, Alan Alda, Clu Gulager, Billy Dee Williams, Kristoffer Tabori.
Directed by Tom Gries.
Any serious film about prisons should be a deterrent. The cutting off of men, convicted of crimes from murder and robbery to manslaughter and petty thieving, and putting them together for months and years with all the inevitable problems of isolation, personality clashes, dominance, corruption, is a frightening thing. This film portrays all this, as well as showing the frustration of working within a limited system, with the good being lost or crushed in the process. As a glimpse of prison, this sombre, but not too sensationalised, film could well be recommended. It could not leave its audiences neutral.
1. The irony of the name for a film about prisons? Was this a satisfactory film about prisons? What were your basic emotional responses to the story and its treatment? Why?
2. Why are films about prisons emotional for audiences? How do audiences respond to the feeling of prisons and the nature of imprisonment and loss of freedom? Why are prisons such dangerous places? Criminals without reform being cooped up together? The possibility of corruption and the abuse of power within prisons? Prisoners amongst themselves, guards and prisoners? Prisons as a symbol of the society which makes them? The status quo and the impossibility of change etc.? Could this film have a healthy effect on audiences who see it, as regards prison reform? Why?
3. The importance of the initial sequences and the credits - with the snow, the white and the blue and the clarity of the air and freedom? The structure of the film as a journey in and out of the prison? The audience going in, experiencing the prison and then going out, changed? How effective was this?
4. How was audience sympathy engaged for the conflicts in the film? Identification with Jonathan Paige and his seeming innocence and uprightness? Also entering the prison with Courtland and his aims of doing a good job? The usefulness of the flashbacks to explain Paige and the nature of his manslaughter? Audience sympathy in realizing that he was not entirely to blame for malice?
5. How well did the film show the mixing of all the prisoners? The details of life in the prison, the cells, the meals, recreation, work, the cliques that formed and the structures of power within the prison? What is your emotional response to this kind of life?
6. What did the film have to say about the wardens? By focussing attention on Courtland with his Vietnam background. his choosing of a career his wanting to do the right thing. his reaction to abuses? How helpless did the audience feel with Courtland?
7. How was this brought to a head by the presentation of the governor? The fact that he was old, running the system for many years, knowing the abuses possible and trying to gloss them over? His reaction at the end in glossing over all the problems? Maintaining the status quo because it was the best available? What was your response to the governor? What should he have done?
8. What did the film have to say about the system and its inadequacies? What should be done for prison reform? What lines did the film indicate?
9. How was Brown and his abuses and links with the prisoners a symbol of the corruption of the wardens? Do you think this was typical or was Brown an exception?
10. What was your response to Slocum and h-is hold over the prisoners? His ability to put pressures on people? The fact that he was followed around by Ajax and other companions? That he thought he was king? His expectations of how he ran things? The meals, his arranging of jobs, his getting drugs, his hold on people like Sinclair? How repulsive was he? Was it inevitable that he and Paige should clash? Why did Paige not bow to him?
11. How sympathetic was the audience to Alan Campbell? The nature of his offence? The fact that he was put in such a prison? The fact that he was young and inexperienced? Believing Slocum? Not realizing the advice that Paige gave him?
12. How well was this portrayed in the inter-relationships of these men - Alan and his getting the guitar and Slocum's hold over him for homosexual purposes, the revenge by mass rape with the ugly men in the laundry, the inevitability of Alan's suicide and the impact of this on the audience? Paige's work in the pharmacy and his refusal to supply the drugs to Ajax and Slocum's men, and the inevitable scuffles between them? The inter-relationship of Paige and Lennox with his black ideals of a big revolution and changing the whole system? Sinclair and his fear of Slocum, his response to Paige, especially about his children's book, and the audience response to Slocum's tearing up his book and the murder of Sinclair?
13. What choices did Paige have as regards prison reform and challenging Slocum? How was this emphasised by the sequence where his wife visited him in prison? Trying to do something or living out the year so that he would be free? Did he make the right choices? Was his death in vain?
14. What did the film have to say about justice and guilt? The irony of the final climax, Slocum being shot, Lennox standing back but giving Paige the gun. Courtland's shooting of Paige? The discussion between Courtland and the governor?
15. Was this an ordinary kind of film treating an important subject, or did it do it very well?
