Escape!

'Do you know how I spend most of my time in prison? Holding imaginary conversations with the Respectable'. Dean's early talkie (from a play by John Galsworthy) is interesting not only for its innovatory location shooting, but for its charmingly archaic concern for the upper class outcast. Killing a policeman in defence of a lady of the streets, our officer and gentleman hero finds himself breaking rocks on Dartmoor and 'treated like a dog'. With a 'By gosh I'll do it!' he's away, and before being caught by a gaggle of policemen, warders, bellringers and peasants, encounters genuine class solidarity among the local gentry. 'I can't bear to see a man like that chased by a lot of yokels', exclaims one of his genteel admirers. Quite so.