Brute Force is a powerful antifascistallegory with existential overtones: there is No Exit from this American prison,which becomes the prison of America ("We're buried, we just ain't deadyet"). It brings the war home, for the isolated penitentiary lorded over bya sadistic tyrant has much in common with an enemy prisoner-of-war camp, and thementality of the convicts, led by Burt Lancaster, is one of siege and escape. Thedifference is that wars implicitly have an end. Flashbacks to the petty crimesthat sent the men up show the postwar economic and spiritual malaise typical ofthe film noirs in our study: men returned from the war, lost in a fog ofdisplaced ideals and unemployment, wander haplessly into lockup. There, societyis protected from their pain. William Daniels's cinematography strikinglyinterprets these themes in Jules Dassin's last Hollywood film before his exile.