1962: Birdman of Alcatraz

Birdman of Alcatraz (Frankenheimer, 1962) 7/10


Cinematic “reality” can be a fickle thing. Take for instance John Frankenheimer’s 1962 biopic The Birdman of Alcatraz: the story of Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) who became (whilst serving a life sentence for murder) a renowed expert in avian diseases and the history of the penal system. Sensitively portrayed with an indigenous sense of grace and sadness by Burt Lancaster, Stroud became something of a cult figure following the film’s release. Thousands wrote to their local congressional representives pleading for Stroud’s release: objecting to how the Federal Bureau of Prisons could lock up such a bright and delicate figure.

Yet, the real life Stroud was as venemous to his fellow citizens as he was tender to his birds. Depending on the version of events, Stroud was initially convicted for assaulting and murdering an Alaskan man who either raped or refused to pay Stroud’s older girlfriend for sex. While incarcerated Stroud assaulted inmmates, threatened guards, illegally acquired narcotics and killed a guard for upholding a rule violation. Furthermore, he once chimed at a parole hearing that he could not wait to leave prison as he had scores to settle. Thanks to the petitions of his mother, Stroud avoided execution and was commuted to life imprisonment in Leavenworth, Kansas by a presidential pardon courtesy of an ailing Woodrow Wilson

But with its tale of human renewal, Stroud’s story was ideal Hollywood material. Joshua Logan, the director of Picnic and Sayonara, had initially been earmarked to direct, but when the Federal Bureau of Prisons resisted Hollywood’s plans the project fell by the wayside; until Harold Hecht took Guy Trosper’s script to his production partner Burt Lancaster. The towering former acrobat then hired his Young Savages director John Frankenheimer to direct the film: despite the fact Frankenheimer had already turned down an earlier attempt to adapt Stroud’s story for television. But with his training on the small-screen, Frankenheimer was able to apply an intimate documentary-style realism to the project. With Lancaster’s excellent expressive and sad-eyed lead performance backed by a collection of strong performances including a palpable effort by the underrated Thelma Ritter as Stroud’s mother and a vexatious “villain” in Karl Malden’s Harvey Shoemaker, Frankenheimer was able to elicit a sensitive reading of Stroud’s life behind bars.

Yet, Frankenheimer’s shrewd reading of Stroud’s life exhibits the elemental hazards built within the framework of the Hollywood bio-picture. By presenting Stroud as a quiet, reformed intellectual, Frankenheimer simplifies Stroud’s events and work into a contorted manifestation of liberalized symbolism. The end-product purges the darkness and criminality of Stroud’s past from the screen: rendering the state’s decision to confine such a brilliant mind as an apparent fallacy of the justice system. Like Stroud, the filmmakers are able to exploit the emotions of their intended audience using methods popularized by Stanley Kramer and Robert Wise in self-important “fallible society” films such as Kramer’s The Defiant Ones and Wise’s I Want To Live! Producing waves of maudlin sentimentality and compassion, which are configured in the film through Edmund O’Brien’s social worker and Stroud advocate Tom Gaddis: the real-life author of Stroud’s biography Birdman of Alcatraz.

Gaddis’ curiously titled biography upon which Trosper’s script is based is a further manipulative device of the era: tapping into the general public’s cultural thirst for Alcatraz related media. Contrary to its title, Stroud was never allowed to maintain his aviary and labratory upon the rock : a privilege rescinded after the inmate transferred his scientific alcohols into his secret home made distillery. Although Frankenheimer’s film alludes to Stroud’s bouts of drunkenness, it does not affirm this as this reason behind the closure of his research and his subsequent transfer to Alcatraz. Rather the prison system, exemplified by Karl Malden’s embittered warden Harvey Shoemaker, is characterized to have become envious of Stroud’s research and subsequent celebrity. His ability to capitalize on penal loopholes, utilize the tenacity of his mother and amass local and national media to his cause is seen in the film as the catalyst behind Shoemaker and the government’s decision to extradite him to the outskirts of San Fransisco Bay.

In Birdman of Alcatraz the justice system is portrayed as a continual roadblock to the development of Stroud’s research, although this same institution grants Stroud unprecedented liberties and extended privileges at the behest of the general public and the scientific community: bestowing concessions for Stroud to maintain and sell his birds, acquire scientific equipment and publish his research, despite government policy disavowing Stroud’s legal right to perform such actions behind bars. Yet, despite their cordial policies, Stroud still selfishly resents the lack of respect accorded to his work. Frankenheimer frames Stroud as a loner and a victim of genius: tormented not by memories of his sadistic crimes, but rather by a “brutal” punitive system which represses him physically and mentally.

Subsequently, cell imagery abounds in Birdman of Alcatraz. Burnett Guffey’s searing black and white cinematography manipulates the geometrical production design and expands on the film’s visual metaphors of imprisonment. The most noticeable visual effect is the use of bars etched across characters’ faces to symbolize the imprisonment of the mind and the body. The proliferation of birdcages in Stroud’s cell and the protagonist’s detailed construction of these enclosures emphasizes this physical imprisonment from which his scientific work liberates him. This provides Stroud with a sense of individual liberty separate from the conformity directed by Shoemaker in his stated initiatives: an artificial sense of autonomy proscribed by Shoemaker’s orthodox ideas of submissive behaviour.

In Stroud’s intellectual labour there also comes a sensation of spiritual and moral renewal: a rebirth and reconfiguration of one’s ambitions and goals. Through his penal rehabilitation, Stroud acquires a directive of how to truly live. The birth of birds in Stroud’s cell and the medical attention administered by the amateur ornithologist further stresses the opportunity for life to begin in an environment of death, as well as the restoration and the application of a moral balance in Stroud’s life.

By positing Stroud as the progenitor of life in a self-destructive atmosphere, Frankenheimer attempts to juxtapose his creative hero with the plain, unimaginative villain: the stagnant bearer of intellectual and physical death. The mis-en-scene corrolates Malden with the cold, bare concrete walls that house the tortured humanized soul of Lancaster’s Robert Stroud. The pity and anguish resonating from Stroud is testament to Lancaster’s laconic performance. His portrayal produces sympathy as, like Frankenheimer’s appaoach, he avoids melodramatics in favour of an austere faux-documentary naturalism.

In Birdman of Alcatraz, the lead emotions are succinctly released to create an enobled and dedicated protagonist who soberly goes about his business, while others attempt to thwart his reformation. It is worth noting that the relationship between Malden and Lancaster grew hostile and cold during production as Lancaster and Frankenheimer would re-write the venerable method actor’s lines before the next day’s shoot: forcing Malden to learn new lines and adapt a new approach. While this arguably adds to the film’s realism in the tension between Lancaster and Malden, it also exemplifies the decision of star and director to cast Stroud as a martyr for the sake of Lancaster’s professional ambitions, rather than biographical accuracy.

The success of Birdman of Alcatraz as both a film and a talking point is down to this sense of intense realism culled from its fine performances, greyed mis-en-scene and business-like direction. Yet, the film’s weakness is to be found in its blatant misappropriation of fact for sentimental fiction. Burt Lancaster may have breathed life into Robert Stroud, but his effort begs the question: how much do we see of Robert Stroud and how much of Burt Lancaster? Audiences were then and today more likely to find a rapport with such a willingly endearing protagonist than a ill-tempered convicted murderer.

Thus, Birdman of Alcatraz demonstrates the inherent flaws within the conventional framework of a cinematic biopic: the desire to misappropriate historical accuracy for critical and financial profit. In general it is this inhibited element, which remains a key failure within the genre to this day as demonstrated by the diluted personal histories in film's ranging from A Beautiful Mind to Beyond The Sea. And therefore the greatest crime commited by Frankenheimer and company is not their willingness to clevely tell the world the story of Robert Stroud, but to unashamedly misinform their audience in the process.

* Birdman of Alcatraz is available through MGM Home Video

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque