Brute Force

Brute Force is a 1947 film noir produced by Mark Hellinger and starring Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Howard Duff and Yvonne DeCarlo.  

Before his untimely death at age 44 also in 1947, Hellinger produced other memorable films such as The Killers (starring Lancaster) and The Naked City (starring Duff).

The film was directed by Jules Dassin.  He also directed other films noir such as Night and the City and The Naked City.

In this film, Lancaster plays the leader of a group of prison inmates plotting an escape.  I can think of at least three other of his films in which he was in prison: The Killers, Birdman of Alcatraz and Judgment at Nuremburg.

Cronyn here portrays a sadistic prison warden, rival of Lancaster.  He played a very positive character in the Alfred Hitchcock film, Lifeboat.

In Brute Force, Duff is another prison convict.  In The Naked City, he is a jewel thief.  Years later, he is the lawyer of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer.

DeCarlo played opposite Lancaster in another film noir, Criss Cross.