Watch Castle on the Hudson For Free

Let's be realistic.

Brilliant and touching

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Directed by Anatole Litvak, John Garfield plays Tommy Gordon, a small time hood who is working his way to the top against the wishes of his girlfriend Kay Manners, played by Ann Sheridan. When he forgets it's his bad luck night (Saturday) and pulls a job anyway, naturally he gets caught.Since Gordon's lawyer (Jerome Cowan) has always been able to get him off easily in the past, he's a pretty cocky guy. However, this time he gets sent to Sing Sing, the "castle", and it takes some isolation treatment by the warden, played by Pat O'Brien, to get him to conform enough to be released into the prison population.Kay visits him in prison and says she's working with his lawyer to get him out. Gordon doesn't trust his lawyer, thinking he's making a play for Kay, and tells her to stay away from him. Gordon soon befriends a couple of cons played by Burgess Meredith, the smart guy, and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, a dumb lug and they all hatch a plan to escape.On the night of the escape, Gordon realizes it's Saturday night and refuses to leave his cell. Good thing too because, the warden was tipped off and, Meredith is killed in the attempt, while Williams is sentenced to die because a guard was killed. When the warden realizes that Gordon didn't try to escape, he begins to trust him.Later, Gordon is summoned by the warden and told that Kay has been in an auto accident and isn't expected to live. If Gordon will promise to come back, the warden will let him go to see her. He promises to return even if it means the chair. As he's leaving the warden's office, he notices that it's Saturday but goes on anyway.On his way to see Kay, Gordon picks up a tail from a policeman who can't believe what he's seeing. When Gordon gets to the bedridden Kay, he learns that his lawyer was indeed moving in on her and was the cause of her injuries. He takes her gun and starts to leave to settle the matter when Kay convinces him not to and to give her the gun. About that time, the lawyer shows up and the two men start fighting. When the lawyer appears to get the upper hand, Kay shoots him. The policemen hears the shot and tries to force Kay's apartment door. Gordon flees with the gun and the lawyers money.Gordon hooks up with his old gang and arranges for safe passage out of town on a boat. However, upon reading the headlines and seeing that the warden will lose his position for letting him go, he decides to return. Kay insists she shot the lawyer but nobody believes her and Gordon is sentenced to die.The ending of the film is very good, with Williams having to face his fate before Garfield, John Litel as the prison chaplain, and a couple of more scenes with Sheridan and O'Brien as Gordon faces his fate.FYI, noted character actor Henry O'Neill plays a district attorney in the film.

John Garfield was at his best here in this 1940 prison drama. He is a cocky individual, too sure of himself due to political ties, who soon finds himself in prison for robbery.He thinks he can play the system but soon finds out otherwise by Warden Pat O'Brien. Garfield is tough, but also quite realistic.Burgess Meredith plays a college graduate also in prison who leads an ill-fated escape attempt which the Garfield character refuses to participate in due to his fear that bad things always befall him on Saturday.Ann Sheridan plays the faithful girlfriend, and pulls out all the stops in the death scene with Garfield.This film subtly is anti-death penalty. It brings out how a dimwitted person was executed for a police killing during the attempted breakout. It also showed how Garfield paid the ultimate price for a murder he didn't do. He just wouldn't be believed as circumstances warranted that.

Cocky gangster (Garfield) goes to prison where he gradually reforms until given a break by the prison warden (O'Brien). Then problems ensue.Typically gritty Warner Bros. fare from the pre-war era. Garfield shows he's in the same gangster class as Cagney and Robinson. Watch him spit out dialog faster than a machine gun burst while doing a tough-guy routine. And who better to double-cross him than that slippery lounge lizard Jerome Cowan who could machine gun his own dialog as a reporter in dozens of period films.But the real scene stealer is scrawny, athletic Burgess Meredith, a brainy con who outwits the prison head-doctor (Grant Mitchell) in the movie's best scene. He may be the least-likely looking con I've seen; still, he and Garfield make a dynamic leadership team (as long as it's not Saturday!). On the other hand, goofy Big Boy Williams strikes me as a matter of taste.It's a compelling, if not original, plot that redeems Garfield without whitewashing him. Still, I'm not sure what his actual capital crime is when they lead him away, especially when the all-powerful Production Code insisted that justice be served on this side of the pearly gates. Nonetheless, his scenes with the warden (O'Brien) are nicely shaded gems of growing respect, while a lovely Sheridan is affecting as the luckless girlfriend. As this gutsy little programmer shows, star-studded MGM may have had the gloss, but plebeian Warner's had the grit.

Except for some opening scenes that show the crime that John Garfield is sent to prison for, Castle on the Hudson is a virtual word for word remake of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing.But it's better cast. John Garfield does far better here than Spencer Tracy did in the original. In fact this was the second remake that Garfield did that improved on the original. He was also better in They Made Me a Criminal than Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in The Life of Jimmy Dolan. Also a big improvement is Burgess Meredith over Lyle Talbot as the stir crazy convict whose escape attempt is a flop.Still though there is that nutty premise of warden Pat O'Brien giving a one day furlough to Garfield where he gets in trouble. Same as the original film, it just doesn't ring true. Or should I say any more true.