Parole! (1936)
Louis Friedlander-directed film
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Memorable, crazy movie
hyped garbage
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Henry Hunter is paroled from prison and tries to make his way on the straight and narrow. However, the entire parole system is so corrupt, that he risks his life to try to fix it in this well-meaning but ineptly produced B picture.The dedicated film fan will want to see this movie for a wealth of character actors, including Alan Hale, Grant Mitchell, Burton Churchill, Alan Dinehart and incredibly young versions of Anthony Quinn -- he's the con who gets shanked at the movie's start -- and Noah Beery Jr. The failings of the movie outweigh that pleasure, with the entire movie shot in a series of small sets and the story told by newspaper headlines, with intermittent pauses as Mr. Hunter pauses to explain that parole is a fine idea, but that the system as it exists is utterly corrupt. More a polemic than a movie, you won't want to see this more than once.
Having made his screen debut this year after being a prizefighter for a short time, the 21 year old Anthony Quinn exploited his dual heritage of an Irish father and Mexican mother in this film. His face was so flexible that you could believe he was an Italian, Indian, Mexican or Greek.