20,000 Years in Sing Sing

Competent prison melodrama with early career work from Spencer Tracy and (in a smaller role) Bette Davis. Tracy is still a bit rough around the edges here and kind of goes into and out of an Edward G. Robinson Little Caesar impression. The concept is kind of funny--it's based on a novel the warden of Sing Sing prison wrote about a heroic and benevolent and wonderful warden of Sing Sing prison who helps convicts (like Tracy) find self worth and become respectable. It's a bit much, but not bad.

A surprisingly low-key, thoughtful prison-reform drama, and visually more interesting than most movies of the time. The real Sing Sing was even used for the exterior shots and crowd scenes. Spencer Tracy was a much more interesting actor without Hepburn around... who knew? He's excellent. It also features Bette Davis before she was "Bette Davis", but the star quality is obvious already. And Lyle Talbot seems to brighten every picture he's in.

Really innovative way to show the sentences. That’s the only good thing I have to say about this movie. It’s boring, poorly acted and filled with bullsiht. “You have to be useful to live” is such a capitalist mentality, it makes my blood boil, life is not work and you should exploit prisoners, fuck you. I hate the warden and I couldn’t give two fuck about Connor

Quite good.

Spencer Tracy in Sing Sing Prison! Yeah, that works. A loud mouth like him fits in jail and they made a good story out of it. It's sort of a 'coming good' story and only lives for one person and that his gal Bette Davis. Arthur Byron as the prison warden also plays a important role for the emotional scenes as one that believes in Tracy. The movie lacked an extra edge to lift it to greatness, but it had cool moments like the sarcastic death row version of "Happy Days Are Here Again".

Bette Davis hadn't completely gotten scary looking by '32 and Tracy did well, but he didn't give his most impressive performance. The story was decent in concept, but was hardly fleshed out enough to make it worth while.

Powerful performances lift this one out of the ordinary.