I watched the 1962 Burt Lancaster flick Birdman of Alcatraz the other day. Really enjoyed it; at least the first hour-and-forty-five-minutes, which should have been called Birdman of Leavenworth. When Burt gets to Alcatraz for the film’s final hour, he’s denied birds of any kind, and the film kinda meanders to a conclusion, eventually.
The Lancaster character, Robert Stroud, is a mean, single-minded S. O. B., incarcerated for murder. Denied a chance to see his beloved mother, he kills the guard responsible, his second murder. A reprieve from none other than Woodrow Wilson, obtained from the tireless drive of Stroud’s mom, spares him an appointment with the hangman. But he is to spend the remainder of his life in solitary confinement.
Eventually Stroud winds up in Leavenworth penitentiary. One night, during his solitary one-hour daily stroll out of his cell, he comes upon a new-born sparrow. An odd look crosses his face as he watches it for what seems an eternity. Finally, he takes it back to his cell and, in a touching but by no means corny scene, he nurses the frail creature to health. Before long he has a whole menagerie in his cramped quarters. He orders birdseed from the outside. He makes birdcages out of wooden crates with only his hands as tools – seven months to complete the first one.
But it doesn’t end there. After a plague kills his birds, he scours everything in his cell and starts over. When sickness again visits, he fights back, studying everything he can with encyclopedias and books from the prison library. Through painstaking trial and error, he develops a cure for this particular bird disease.
We follow this oddball story as Stroud publishes articles and journals, wins contests in bird enthusiast magazines, and becomes one of the foremost experts on all things canary in the world. Self-taught in avian anatomy, physiology, histology, and pathology, he eventually publishes a landmark book entitled Stroud’s Encyclopedia of Bird Diseases.
Oh, and over the course of these three decades, he manages to became a human being.
Not much of an authority on Burt Lancaster. Seen him in From Here to Eternity, The Professionals and The Killers, all of which I liked, and remember him as Doctor Moreau from that awful movie in the 70s. There was always something hollow or muted about him as an actor, in my admittedly purely recreational study of the subject. I can’t see him legitimately letting go if a role called for it. But here, in this role, I think he was dead perfect. Very, very convincing portraying an unlikable man who becomes somewhat admirable in what he was able to accomplish and do with a life initially thrown away.
Like Lawrence of Arabia, another movie based on a book, Birdman highly idealizes its subject almost to the point of pure fantasy. While Stroud did do the things he’s depicted of doing with birds, not so with his fellow man and his own self-actualization. Most likely he was not the stoic and tireless fighter for justice, first manifested in his care for helpless birds, later for his attempts to reform the penal system while at Alcatraz. There is legitimate criticism that Stroud the real man was a nasty predatory piece of work who never quite completed the character arc to noble soul, let alone a normally-functioning one. He was never allowed to see the movie of his life and died the day before the John F. Kennedy assassination.
But that would be a tale not worth bringing to the big screen. As it is, I don’t mind my biopics transfused with a little inspiration. Birdman of Alcatraz is a good movie, in that respect, and I recommend at least a once-see.
The Lancaster character, Robert Stroud, is a mean, single-minded S. O. B., incarcerated for murder. Denied a chance to see his beloved mother, he kills the guard responsible, his second murder. A reprieve from none other than Woodrow Wilson, obtained from the tireless drive of Stroud’s mom, spares him an appointment with the hangman. But he is to spend the remainder of his life in solitary confinement.
Eventually Stroud winds up in Leavenworth penitentiary. One night, during his solitary one-hour daily stroll out of his cell, he comes upon a new-born sparrow. An odd look crosses his face as he watches it for what seems an eternity. Finally, he takes it back to his cell and, in a touching but by no means corny scene, he nurses the frail creature to health. Before long he has a whole menagerie in his cramped quarters. He orders birdseed from the outside. He makes birdcages out of wooden crates with only his hands as tools – seven months to complete the first one.
But it doesn’t end there. After a plague kills his birds, he scours everything in his cell and starts over. When sickness again visits, he fights back, studying everything he can with encyclopedias and books from the prison library. Through painstaking trial and error, he develops a cure for this particular bird disease.
We follow this oddball story as Stroud publishes articles and journals, wins contests in bird enthusiast magazines, and becomes one of the foremost experts on all things canary in the world. Self-taught in avian anatomy, physiology, histology, and pathology, he eventually publishes a landmark book entitled Stroud’s Encyclopedia of Bird Diseases.
Oh, and over the course of these three decades, he manages to became a human being.
Not much of an authority on Burt Lancaster. Seen him in From Here to Eternity, The Professionals and The Killers, all of which I liked, and remember him as Doctor Moreau from that awful movie in the 70s. There was always something hollow or muted about him as an actor, in my admittedly purely recreational study of the subject. I can’t see him legitimately letting go if a role called for it. But here, in this role, I think he was dead perfect. Very, very convincing portraying an unlikable man who becomes somewhat admirable in what he was able to accomplish and do with a life initially thrown away.
Like Lawrence of Arabia, another movie based on a book, Birdman highly idealizes its subject almost to the point of pure fantasy. While Stroud did do the things he’s depicted of doing with birds, not so with his fellow man and his own self-actualization. Most likely he was not the stoic and tireless fighter for justice, first manifested in his care for helpless birds, later for his attempts to reform the penal system while at Alcatraz. There is legitimate criticism that Stroud the real man was a nasty predatory piece of work who never quite completed the character arc to noble soul, let alone a normally-functioning one. He was never allowed to see the movie of his life and died the day before the John F. Kennedy assassination.
But that would be a tale not worth bringing to the big screen. As it is, I don’t mind my biopics transfused with a little inspiration. Birdman of Alcatraz is a good movie, in that respect, and I recommend at least a once-see.
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