The Play and Screen

...But the material used obviously has its genesis largely in the events of recent months in many prisons over the country, where the spirit of gangland has broken forth with unexampled ferocity...

...In view of the sentimentalizing of the prisoners' characters, one is inclined to take it, emotionally at least, as an attack on capital punishment itself...

...His tender conscience almost explodes with scruples and indignation, but when Castel-Benac obtains for him-through blackmail pressure- a degree of doctor of moral philosophy for which Topaze has yearned all his life, the scruples fade...

...The moment comes at last when there are only two bullets left-with three prisoners remaining alive...

...It is never easy to think of them as murderers, convicted after careful trial by twelve impartial jurors...

...The lights are made to go dim a second time...

...The play is cleverly conceived, well written, and though some of its situations are of one sophisticated piece with several of its rascally characters the general treatment is adult without being offensive...

...Unhappily, his honesty extends even to the markings which he gives the son of an influential baroness who demands the dismissal of Topaze...

...The strained nerves of the other men break forth...

...As to the propaganda involved concerning capital punishment, it is never quite clear whether the author is attacking the death penalty itself, or only the painfully slow methods by which the American system carries it out...

...It combines all the stock features of melodrama with material familiar to the average audience only through the columns of the tabloid press...

...A brief raid in the neighboring corridor yields a few more victims-the priest, the principal keeper and two guards...

...Such direct mental brutality can be justified only by a very passionate and sincere purpose in the writing, and by an uncompromising adherence to truth...

...The honesty of great art is sacrificed to the emotional ferocity of false illusion...

...He soon becomes stronger than his master...

...Its weakness lies in an inner lack of proportion and truth, and in that mawkish sentimentality which creates false situations and false values to prove a point...

...His vision goes beyond petty graft...

...The latter makes it a habit to throw all city contracts his own way through the use of a convenient dummy...

...But several of the other characters lack entirely the Gallic flavor in their acting...

...Further to confuse values, the principal keeper is made out an ineffectual coward...

...THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER The Last Mile JOHN WEXLEY'S play about a mutiny in the death house of a western state prison should be considered in two separate aspects, that is, in its worth as a play, and in the light of the propaganda it is obviously intended to spread concerning capital punishment...

...During the progress of this transformation, we have a chance to see graft hovering in all quarters, and the efficacy of blackmail even at the seat of national government...

...Its morals are, of course, utterly topsy-turvy, in that honesty is unable to hold its head above water and the ways of political graft emerge triumphant...

...Spencer Tracy, in particular, as John Mears, puts the final seal on his qualifications as one of our best and most versatile young actors-a position he has been headed for ever since his outstanding work in that trivial little comedy, The Baby Cyclone...

...On the very day that Topaze loses his job at the school, Castel-Benac has a break with his dummy, who demands too high a percentage of the graft, and through the suggestion of Madame Courtois, the innocent Topaze is offered the job of the dummy...

...One of them cries out, "They're giving it to him again...

...It is, essentially, a scathing satire on graft...

...This cardinal weakness deprives the play of at least half of the justification it might claim for its sadism...

...The sharpest irony of the play begins when Topaze gradually learns the real nature of his patron's business...

...But this is the way of relentless satire, and there is never a chance of the real point being lost...

...In this sense, the play is timely...

...Something of the character of the play and its method may be gathered from the first-act curtain...

...Topaze has by no means understood the relations between Suzy and Castel-Benac, a member of the local city council...

...Their guns and cartridges are turned over to the prisoners, and the death house prepares for a siege...

...Much of the effectiveness of the American adaptation depends on the expert characterization of Topaze by Frank Morgan...

...But neither fine acting, nor expert staging, nor technical excellence in play construction can justify the cruel and morbid horror of this play when, in central characterization, it breaks down into sentimental distortion and twisted values...

...Topaze is a meek and ever so honest school teacher in a small boarding-school of provincial France...

...The first act gives, with excruciating detail, the preparation of a prisoner for electrocution-the last meal, the ministrations of the priest, the cutting of the trousers, the ghastly comments of the condemned men in the neighboring cells, the last faltering march toward the death chamber, capped by the dimming of the lights as the fatal current is applied...

...At the Music Box Theatre...

...Like all plays with a "mission" its theme is apt to stir emotions and prejudices which have nothing to do with the play itself as an example of dramatic craftsmanship...

...The sophistication is the woof of the satire...

...It recognizes no such thing as artistic restraint...

...The author acknowledges his indebtedness to a short magazine sketch by one Robert Blake, written when the latter was himself in the death house awaiting his execution...

...For this trifling service he is to receive what appears to him as fabulous wealth...

...On the other hand, the incidents of the play derive their point chiefly from the suspense which a condemned prisoner must face between the time of conviction and the execution of the sentence-on the needless cruelty, in short, of the American system...

...He brings an irresistible touch of pathos to the first and second acts...

...In the first act we see him laboriously trying to inculcate copy-book maxims into the minds of a rebellious class of small boys...

...Considered simply as a play, the structure of The Last Mile is admirably suited to keep suspense and interest at the highest pitch...

...The second act, two weeks later, shows the start of the mutiny...

...Good God-do they want to cook him...

...One of the prisoners catches the guard by the neck, from behind the bars, nearly strangles him, takes his gun and keys, and then, freeing the others, assumes command...

...In the meantime, Topaze has been giving lessons outside of hours to a boy he believes to be the nephew of an attractive widow, one Suzy Courtois...

...From then on the play is pure melodrama -the battle between the prisoners and the guards and troopers outside, the sirens and searchlights, the messages of defiance back and forth between the warden and the prisoners, the relentless shooting of the hostages, the narrow escape of the priest from a like fate, and all the oaths and blasphemies which form the accompaniment of such realism...

...At the Harris Theatre...

...He explains to the surviving chaplain that he never expected to gain freedom, but that "something had to be done" to show those in authority the despair which present capital punishment methods could generate...

...One of them is constantlly bleating about "the little girl" back home who is about to have a child...

...Moreover, it is presented with the most complete realism and an uncompromising determination to make the audience experience every last emotion of horror, suspense and mental torture...

...It is frankly and purposely sadistic in its method...

...All he has to do is to sign papers and maintain the outward dignity of an office...

...Phoebe Foster and Clarence Derwent as Suzy and Castel-Benac respectively maintain the spirit of the piece admirably...

...I see no reason to question the sincerity of purpose, but I did find the play constantly veering toward maudlin sentiment and a falsifying of values...

...There can be no question of the excellence of the staging and casting of this play...

...Topaze THERE is a certain universal irony in this comedy by Marcel Pagnol which carries it beyond the confines of its originally Gallic spirit...

...Thus the basis for exaggerated pity is cleverly faked, and the emotion of the moment is heightened at the expense of inner truth...

...He double-crosses Castel-Benac himself, and brings the play to an end by taking away from the discomfited politician not only his business but the affection of Madame Courtois...

...The leader decides to offer himself to the machine-gun fire outside, so that the two remaining can take their own lives rather than wait for the torture of more weeks in the death house...

...Aside from the leader of the mutiny, John Mears, known as "the killer," the prisoners are made to appear a mild and long-suffering lot...

...The mere fact that the irony of the play has overtones as easy to understand in New York as in France does not lessen the need for the touch of French style necessary for full illusion...