The Criminal Code
About The Criminal Code
District Attorney Mark Brady sends Robert Graham to prison for manslaughter after a drunken fight. Six years later Brady is warden of that prison, and on the doctor’s advice he makes Graham his valet. Graham grows close to Brady’s daughter Mary. A stool pigeon wrecks an escape and a guard kills a prisoner; Graham’s cellmate Ned Galloway then murders the informer in the office. Brady offers parole if Graham will name the killer. Graham will not, and he goes to the hole. Mary tells her father she loves Graham. Galloway gets himself sent to the hole to settle with yard captain Gleason.
Cast & crew
More about The Criminal Code
Harry Cohn and Frank Fouce produced the film at Columbia from Martin Flavin’s 1929 play, which had played the Belasco Theatre. Hawks told Peter Bogdanovich the play had a strong first two acts and a bad third. Seton I. Miller, who had written Hawks’s The Dawn Patrol, reworked Flavin’s draft with Fred Niblo Jr. Hawks hired former convicts as extras and used their ideas for the ending.
Themes
Background
The film belongs to the early-1930s prison pictures. Flavin had also supplied additional dialogue for The Big House (1930). Columbia was still the smaller studio Harry Cohn was trying to push up from programmers.
In film history
Karloff carried Galloway over from the Broadway cast. The film role widened his work in pictures in 1931, the year before Frankenstein made him a star name.
Making
Hawks later called Walter Huston the greatest actor he ever worked with. The picture is Hawks’s second sound film. Senses of Cinema notes the overlapping dialogue.
Reviews
Mordaunt Hall, in the New York Times, granted that Hawks’s direction was mostly intelligent and firm, then faulted sequences he thought extravagant. He told Hawks to follow the restraint of Huston’s performance.
Audiences
Columbia liked the property well enough to remake it in 1938 and again in 1950. A 2009 Senses of Cinema note calls the 1931 release a commercial success and does not give a figure.
Look
James Wong Howe, credited as James How, and Ted Tetzlaff photographed the film in black and white.
Technique
Hawks overlaps lines of dialogue instead of waiting for each speaker to finish, a habit he was already using in his second sound picture.
Music
Sam Perry wrote the music and received no credit.
Preservation
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons as The Criminal Code (1930).webm, and another is on the Internet Archive.
Notes
- Boris Karloff repeats his Broadway role as Ned Galloway.
- Fred Niblo Jr. is the son of director Fred Niblo.
- This is the first of Hawks’s four films for Harry Cohn, ahead of Twentieth Century, Only Angels Have Wings, and His Girl Friday.
- Columbia reused shots in Behind the Mask (1932), which also features Constance Cummings and Karloff.
- Columbia filmed the play again as Penitentiary (1938) and Convicted (1950).
- Edward Jewell is the uncredited art director.
- James Wong Howe is billed as James How.
Scenes
- The inmates stage a loud, nonviolent protest when Brady arrives as warden.
- Galloway kills the informer in the prison office.
- Graham turns down parole and is sent to the hole.
- Galloway arranges to be sent to the hole after Gleason.
Influenced by
- Martin Flavin's 1929 play The Criminal Code
Influenced
- Penitentiary (1938)
- Convicted (1950)
Also available
- Internet Archive (1931-the-criminal-code-el-codigo-criminal-howard-hawks-vo)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Criminal Code (1930).webm)
