Star Review
John Ford made a handful of classic films and an impressive number of very nearly great pictures. Stagecoach is a masterpiece, and The Searchers may well be the greatest western ever made. If The Prisoner of Shark Island doesn't quite attain these heights, it is certainly one of the finest wronged-man films in Hollywood history. It tells the story of Samuel A. Mudd, the southern doctor who set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg, was convicted of complicity in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and given life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. Especially effective are the suspenseful escape attempt through shark-infested waters and Mudd's heroic battle against an outbreak of yellow fever, which ultimately earned him his pardon.
Warner Baxter gives the performance of his career as Dr. Mudd, Gloria Stuart is sympathetic as his wife, and a number of finely-etched character performances give the picture much of its strength. There's Claude Gillingwater in a delightful turn as Mudd's outspoken, Confederate father-in-law, Ernest Whitman as the ex-slave, Buck, who remains loyal to Mudd and, especially, the cadaverous John Carradine, who later co-starred in Ford's Stagecoach, as the sadistic Sergeant Rankin. Nunnally Johnson's screenplay is literate throughout, and Bert Glennon's lustrous, chiaroscuro cinematography, previously seen in Josef von Sternberg's Blonde Venus and The Scarlet Empress, among others, is a delight. Similarly effective is Ford's use of tight, dramatic close-ups, reminiscent of those frequently employed by Orson Welles.
A decided coup for this MoC release is its insightful commentary by biographer Scott Eyman, author of ‘Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford’.
R. Dixon Smith on 1st March 2006
View all 19 of R. Dixon Smith’s reviews
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Film Description
Based on the true-life case of the incarceration of Dr. Samuel Mudd, Ford's film dramatizes the fatal shooting of Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent visit by the assassin John Wilkes Booth to Dr. Samuel Mudd's house to fix his broken leg. Unaware of Booth's treason, Mudd is later arrested — narrowly escaping execution after a one-sided military trial — and sentenced to a life of hard labour at Fort Jefferson. With a muscular performance by John Carradine as a sadistic prison guard, this is a tautly-scripted examination of Dr. Mudd's struggle to overcome inhuman justice. Regarded as a personal favourite by the director, it was also the film he was said to be happiest with.
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The Prisoner Of Shark Island (Masters Of Cinema)
