WARNING: SPOILERS

In the 1970s, my father was the movie critic for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, my friend Dan R. was a big Clint Eastwood fan, and rarely the twain met. Eastwood may have been big at the box office but generally not with critics. I believe Pauline Kael even used the f-word for him: fascist.

One day, though, I was happy to report to Dan that my father actually liked Clint’s latest. Dan was unimpressed. “Probably means I won’t,” he said flatly.

I don’t know if Dan ever saw “Escape From Alcatraz,” but it’s not exactly a departure for Eastwood. He plays another strong, silent type dealing with men who want to break him down (Warden Dollison, played by Patrick McGoohan), fuck him up (guards, mostly) or just fuck him (Wolf, played by Bruce M. Fischer). But he survives. He wins. Every battle.

If the movie is a departure it’s because it’s based on a true story—a rarity for Clint in those days. It’s also a procedural, which is probably why my father liked it. It’s methodical and factual. It’s all about the how of a prison break.

The Shawshank distinction
Was “Alcatraz” the first movie I saw where prison rape was implied? I think so. It came out a year after “Scared Straight!” didn’t shy away from the topic.

Clint plays Frank Morris, who was sent to Alcatraz in 1960, and escaped with two others, John and Clarence Anglin (Fred Ward and Jack Thibeau) in 1962. Whether they truly escaped, or drown in the attempt, as the FBI contend, is still unresolved, but the movie leans toward escape. On Angel Island, 2+ miles from Alcatraz, and only a half mile from the mainland, Warden Dollison finds a chrysanthemum on a rock. Chrysanthemums, he’s told, don’t grow on Angel Island, but they were the symbol of hope and freedom for an inmate, Doc (Roberts Blossom), whose life the warden ruined. The flower, it’s implied, is a private message from Frank. A final fuck you.

Bigger point: Did Stephen King see this? He must have. He was a big movie guy and this was a popular movie, the 14th highest-grossing film of 1979. Three years later he published “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” and there are parallels:

• Prisoner protagonists with high IQs
• Working out of the prison library
• Being the target of rape/attempted rape
• A battle of wits with the warden
• The slow chiseling of weakened concrete
• Releasing excavated concrete/dirt in the prison yard via pants legs
• “Nobody ever escaped from Alcatraz/Shawshank”

“Shawshank,” the movie, makes the parallels more explicit. In the novella, Andy Dufresne is short; in the movie, he’s a tall drink of water like Clint. In the novella, Red is white. In the movie, he’s black, like English (Paul Benjamin), Frank’s kinda-sorta best friend in stir in “Alcatraz.” In the novella, Andy doesn’t hide his chiseling tool in a Bible—the way Frank does with the warden’s nail file and the way the movie Andy does with the rock hammer.

Both movies give us the feel-good camaraderie of a group of prisoners. Frank’s group includes:

• Doc, whose painting privileges are rescinded when he paints an unflattering portrait of the warden. He winds up cutting off his fingers in protest.
• Charley Butts (Larry Hankin), a new, dopey prisoner, and Frank’s neighbor, who is in on the prison break but chickens out at the last minute.
• Litmus (Frank Ronzio), who keeps a pet mouse in his shirt.
• English, the black con, who heads the prison library, and who taunts Frank (and is taunted back) with “boy” comments.

That said—and calm down already “Shawshank” fans—they’re completely different movies. “Alcatraz,” as mentioned, is a procedural. The prison break is step-by-step, which means we’re in on it throughout, which means we’re anxious throughout. Will Frank get caught? Can they make it to the water? Can they make it across the water? In “Shawshank,” Andy’s prison break comes as a surprise. We assumed he was leaning toward suicide.

Indeed, the difference in films is the exact distinction Alfred Hitchcock between suspense and surprise. Hitchcock sets up a scene: a ticking bomb beneath a table where two men are talking. Now you could direct it, he says, so the bomb just goes off. Or you could show the audience the men talking, then the ticking bomb, then the men talking.

In the first case, we have given the public 15 seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with 15 minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed—except when the surprise is a twist: that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

Which it is in “Shawshank.”

Boy toys
Something else I pondered watching “Alcatraz” in 2024: Was Clint a little racist or did he just keep pandering to his base? Or did he like ruffling liberal feathers?

All of the above?

I’m thinking of “I gots to know,” and that scene in “Jersey Boys”: “Come back when you’re black,” which is one of the most insulting lines in movie history.

Here, Frank not only calls English “boy,” but say to his face, “I guess I don’t like niggers,” and it’s fine. It’s fun. Because English started it both times. English keeps calling Frank “boy” until Frank, amused, responds in kind; and when Frank visits him in the bleachers in the black section of the yard, where he sits on the top step, a king of the hill, and then Frank, maybe out of respect, doesn’t sit with him, English says it’s either because he’s scared or because “You don’t like niggers.” At which point, Frank plops himself down next to him and says the line.

I’m probably overreacting. But the scenes do have a ’70s vibe rather than a 1960 vibe. The dynamic feels post-Black Power, rather than, you know, lunch-counter sit-in.

But the dynamic, and the rapport between the actors, is good, and they become friends. And in the end, Frank lets him know, subtly, that he’s breaking out, and offers his hand through the bars. After that, the day of the escape, Wolf is gunning for Frank in the yard with a shiv but English stops him. He puts him in a headlock and guides him to the black area of the yard. Because in the end black people watch over us? Because Frank represents hope, which is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies?

Anyway, my memory is correct: Dad liked it. Dan has yet to weigh in.

“A man of few words, two fists and the ambling gait of Henry Fonda” pretty much sums up the Eastwood persona.