The Masters of Cinema Series

About The Prisoner of Shark Island

by Lindsay Anderson, 2006

“Je n’aime la merveille,” wrote Alain-Fournier, “que lorsqu’elle est étroitement insérée dans la réalité.” (* “I only like marvel when it is situated narrowly within reality.”) One knows better than to ask for statements of aesthetic creed from Ford, but if the other side of what we have called his split personality were gifted with the power of critical self-expression — or with the readiness to declare itself — such is precisely the kind of statement one would expect it to make. During the span of years between The Informer and The Fugitive, Ford was producing another series of films (apart from his purely commercial assignments), entirely different in atmosphere and approach. These were not films which came unexpectedly from his talent: they related closely to the pioneering tales of his youth, to the genre pieces he was producing with Will Rogers in the thirties. They were films which he seems generally not to have initiated himself, but which he was able, with increasing authority, to stamp with his own vision, and make speak with his own voice. Unlike the three pictures with Nichols (which take place in Dublin, on a British tramp-steamer, and in a mythical country of the imagination), these are all American subjects, with stories which pass in a context of reality, closely and literally observed. This “reality” gives substance to what is “marvellous” in the films — that is to say, what is poetic. The first of them, or at least the earliest that can now be seen, is The Prisoner of Shark Island, made shortly after The Informer, and released in 1936.

The film starts in Washington, on April 9th, 1865. Peace has been signed, and the Civil War is ended; the people are celebrating with bonfires and dancing in the streets. Shots of the jubilant crowds silhouetted before the flames are accompanied by the sturdy thump of bands which play the Northern march, “Rally Round the Flag”. A procession gets under way, heading for the White House; from a high angle we see the cheerful mob crossing a dark, empty square, torches bobbing, a high-stepping couple hilariously leading the way. Before the White House, they come to a halt. A window opens and out on to the balcony steps the President — a weary, bowed figure, an old shawl round his shoulders. He addresses the hushed crowd with gentle words of thanksgiving and reconciliation, ending, “…I ask the band to play ‘Dixie’.” There is a moment of silence, as people look at each other in surprise and momentary hesitation; they then burst spontaneously into cheers, the band strikes up, and the crowd joins in with the words of the unofficial anthem of the South… There could be no better introduction to the other Ford. For all its distance from us in time and space, here is a world made immediately vivid; recreated for us with gusto, an enlivening sympathy, and a simple generosity of emotion; above all bathed in an idealizing light — illuminating in this instance the person of Lincoln — more apt to show what men can be, and should be, than what, to the superficial observation of every day, they actually are.

Written by Nunnally Johnson, The Prisoner of Shark Island tells the true story of Dr. Samuel Mudd, a country physician in Maryland, an innocent victim of the policy of political expediency pursued by the American government after Lincoln’s death; its theme is this man’s persistent courage and integrity in the face of the bitterest injustice. The prologue shows Lincoln in Washington, his public appearance at a performance of The American Cousin, and his murder. Booth, his fanatical assassin, is wounded, and breaks his flight at the house of Mudd, who sets his leg for him. The incident is discovered, and, together with half a dozen other suspects, Mudd is tried by a military court for complicity in Lincoln’s murder. The judges have been instructed beforehand that, with public opinion in its present inflamed state, the accused must be found guilty. Some are executed; Mudd is sentenced to life imprisonment on the island prison (its name comes from the shark-infested moat which surrounds it) on the Dry Tortugas. With the help of his wife, he makes a daring attempt to escape and seek a retrial; but at the very moment of success he is caught, taken back, and thrown into solitary confinement. When an epidemic of yellow fever breaks out on the island, the governor is forced to ask Mudd for his help; his ungrudging service is instrumental in securing him a pardon.

In theme as well as in style, The Prisoner of Shark Island is a film with many points of interest. It is openly patriotic, but its patriotism is of that rarer kind (particularly in the cinema) that does not flinch at criticism. From this point of view its spokesman is the Governor of the prison — an upright man, fair-minded as well as strict (and played, incidentally, by Harry Carey, Ford’s old friend and mentor, with the same manly simplicity that brought him such popularity in those early Westerns). Convinced finally of Mudd’s innocence, he tells him that he will fight to secure him a pardon “…because I do love the flag I serve, and because I am jealous of its honour.” The film too, in the same unrhetorical manner, loves the flag it serves, and is jealous of its honour. If the ideal spirit of the nation is evoked in the revered figure of Lincoln, and in the national songs that echo through the picture, the other face of democracy and of government is no less feelingly depicted in the opportunist carpetbaggers; the mob calling vengefully for blood; the harsh and inhuman Attorney General who dictates to his judges that they shall find the accused guilty (“…with no pedantic regard for the customary laws of evidence”) before the trial has even begun. Whether in anger or affirmation, the film’s statement is constantly humane: the “suspects” are shuffled into court, manacled and hooded, to be thrust down one after another in the dock, and brought blinking and dishevelled, like frightened animals, face to face with their implacable accusers… In the prison hospital, as Mudd smashes the windows to let out the foetid air, a gaunt, tattered figure rises in the background, bathing himself in the clean wind that comes sweeping through the ward. These are glimpses that have the force and implication of true symbols — for this world is a real one; the people are real. There is no attempt to keep the story on a permanent level of symbolism; in the relaxed scenes at Mudd’s Maryland home (the exteriors are all shot on location), and in characters like Buck, his devoted Negro servant, and his peppery old father-in-law, there is a popular, earthy humour that gives a solid backing to the more highly dramatic episodes. When Buck, who has followed his master to prison, remarks with a musing sigh — “Maryland sure seems a long way away…” — there is a reality in the situation, and in the memory, that gives the moment a sudden, surprising depth of emotion. Just as this is a pointer forward to one of the most characteristic virtues of Ford’s developed style — the ability to crystallise in a word or a silence a whole range of underlying feelings; so the character of Mudd himself is the first in a line of recognisably fraternal heroes — a good man in no spectacular sense, conscientious in his work, a kindly master and a loving husband and father; plunged by chance into nightmare, and humanly tempted to bitterness. But his courage prevails. He remains faithful to his ideals, and true to himself — a humble and persistent Mr. Standfast.

The qualities of The Prisoner of Shark Island at its best are remarkable; one would not claim that they are consistent. One is used to thinking of Ford as already a fully-equipped craftsman by the time he came to make The Informer; but there are passages in Shark Island (particularly in the domestic scenes) which show that he had not yet entirely mastered the art of shooting a conversation piece. These scenes are in fact marked by a certain, rather engaging primitivism, accentuated by the playing of Gloria Stuart as Mudd’s wife — a charming, flaxen-haired girl, but lacking somewhat the sturdy flesh-and-blood of the majority of the other characters. And where Ford’s control is firm (which is during most of the film), the handling varies interestingly, at times maintaining a quite naturalistic style, and at others employing effects that recall the more mannered experiments of The Informer. Here and there the set designs are purposely distorted, and there is occasional use of shadow effects, simplified backings and formal grouping of characters. At times the lighting is strongly chiaroscuro, giving an almost formal quality to some of the shots of Mudd in his cell, and accentuating the difference between the idyllic Maryland countryside, and the ugly world of courtroom and prison.

Effective though such contrasts can be, they are liable to break the unity of feeling in a film. By the time Ford came to make Stagecoach, three years later, he had achieved a degree of control which enabled him to make his effects within a consistent and homogeneous style…