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I wanted to watch John Frankenheimer's The Birdman Of Alcatraz with my girlfriend (she refused, no Prison Break please) - but in the end, we both loved this unusual intimate play! Because The Birdman Of Alcatraz is really no Prison Break in the traditional sense! The film simply reverses the usual formula, bringing depth and humanity to this film adaptation of the life of Robert Stroud. After a true story. For 53 years the over 70 year old "Birdman" was in prison. Burt Lancaster vividly shows how this time leaves deep scars, how one forces something like privacy in prison. Highlight of the film: Birdman's clash with the vindictive prison warden. Robert Stroud, convicted of murder, continues his education behind bars, dedicates himself to bird breeding. In fact he discovered cures for bird diseases, which he eventually published. Like in the biggest and most important movies of Frankenheimer during the 60's, The Birdman Of Alcatraz is about the dignity of man. The redemption of the dignity of the individual in an inhuman system. Because true freedom, it always comes from within! By the way, the hateful prison warden finds out the opposite. One day he must realize that he has grown old with Birdman. Just like his inmates, he has spent most of his life behind bars. Both men, the Birdman and the prison warden, have to realize that they spent their lives on Prison Island of Alcatraz...

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 There is this one scene that encapsulates the whole gentle worldview of Hal Ashby’s classic: there are just 90 minutes to go before they arrive at Portsmouth Naval Prison. Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and Richard ‘Mule’ Mulhall (Otis Young) are accompanied by their 18-year-old protégé, Larry Meadows (Randy Quaid). Buddusky and Mule have been assigned, as soldiers, to escort Larry there. He is due to serve an eight-year sentence for stealing money. So what does he want to do with these last 90 minutes? Let’s recap: over the past five days of their crossing, they’ve plied Larry with alcohol, got him high and treated him to a trip to a brothel. They’ve had a fight with some marines and bought Larry the best sandwiches in the world (with Italian sausage). What else is there to do? The three of them walk along a snow-covered street in Boston. Buddusky thinks the weather is rubbish. If it were summer, they could have a picnic right now. So he tries to light a fire, whilst Mule crouches beside him, shivering. That’s how brilliant *The Last Detail* is! We witness these three men, frustrated as they try to comply with the unyielding military bureaucracy (while being forced to fight an immoral war). It is precisely people like Buddusky and Mule who, despite everything, manage to show HUMANITY towards their fellow men within such a system.