Invisible Stripes (1939) ***

Release Date: December 30, 1939

Running Time: 81 minutes

Cast: George Raft, Jane Bryan, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart

Director: Lloyd Bacon

Invisible Stripes follows and at the same time subverts the requirements of the Motion Picture Production Code also known as The Hays Code. The Hays code was designed by Will H. Hays as a way to appease the good Christian population who looked at movies as a tool of the devil and insisted a code of morality be put in place to govern the content of films. It also insisted that films not glamorize crime and show that criminal behavior always went punished in the end. It wouldn’t do to show audiences in the 30’s that crime could lead to prosperity. Invisible Stripes tows the line in these regards but subverts it by also depicting that a reformed convict cannot find legitimate income after serving his sentence, thus being forced by the system back into a life of crime because the system designed to reform also provides no avenue for that person to reintegrate back into society. This is illustrated perfectly by the two leads, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, two men who are on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to being reformed. Raft wants to go straight while Bogart accepts that a life of crime is all he has going for him. They may no longer wear prison stripes but the invisible stripes will follow them to their graves.

The story opens with two men, both finishing up their prison sentences. The first man, Cliff Taylor (Raft), is determined that he has learned a lesson from prison and vows to go straight. He has a woman waiting for him on the outside, family, and his old job to go back to. The second man, Chuck Martin (Bogart), is only looking to go back to the underworld and believes Cliff to be an idealist waiting to have his eyes opened to the real world. 

Upon returning home, Cliff is welcomed by his mother (Flora Robson, who was actually a year younger than her on screen son, George Raft) his brother Tim (William Holden), and Peggy (Jane Bryan), Tim’s fiancé. Tim has been putting off marriage in the hopes of being better able to provide a comfortable life for Peggy even if it means breaking the law to do so. Cliff is determined however to protect Tim from ever having to go through prison like he did. Things seem ideal at first but Cliff soon finds that not only is he no longer employed at his old job but his girl wants nothing to do with an ex-con. To make matters worse, Cliff struggles to find steady work as his status puts him at odds with either his potential employers or the men he must work around. When he finally does land a job, shortly afterwards the place is burglarized and he is arrested without evidence. He is released soon after but the damage is done and he is fired again. 

Meanwhile, Tim is getting more and more agitated at his perceived shortcomings financially, nearly coming to blows with a gentleman who mistakes Peggy for a flower peddler when she is seen holding a bouquet on the streets. An offhand remark by Peggy about luxury items sets him off further and it’s only a matter of time before he does something to land himself in serious legal trouble. Seeing no other options for himself or his brother, Cliff gets back in touch with Chuck, his friend from prison, and agrees to help with some robberies that he hopes will fund opening a business for himself and Tim so that his brother will not ruin his and Peggy’s lives.

At its heart, Invisible Stripes is a pessimistic one. It shows a world very much like the real one where a person, having committed a serious crime, may never be redeemed, at least not in the eyes of society. The world will always see those stripes on him no matter how hard he scrubs at them. Cliff starts to learn that lesson early and his ultimate decision to go back to crime is solely to spare his brother from the same life-long stigma. His intentions are noble but the world forced him into making that decision in the first place. Raft does an excellent job at portraying the frustrations of a man just trying to make good against all odds.

William Holden is equally good here in one of his first credited roles. His is the part of a man who doesn’t want to do bad things but is afraid of a world where he has a family to raise and unable to provide for it. He sees a need in Peggy for the finer things in life and fears being unable to provide them for her. Peggy doesn’t really care if they have luxuries so long as she has Tim yet he latches onto any reference from her to nice things and obsesses over how she must long for such niceties. Jane Bryan is stellar here as well, matching Holden scene for scene as the woman who loves her man, even when he grows angry and irrational. The hurt in her eyes when he explodes on the rich man attempting to buy flowers from her shows her love and dismay at the man she has latched on to. This would be one of her final performances before marrying a wealthy man and retiring from the screen. It was a loss for audiences but not one for her as the two stayed married for over forty years until his death in the 80’s.

The premise of society against the ex-con was not a new one in 1939 and it was a subject that still get’s made to this day. Marvel Studios fell back on it for their 2015 superhero film Ant-Man. It is a subject that is still relevant today as prisoners still have to battle the stigma of serving time. People in general have a hard time getting over pre-conceived notions about people. If you had a bad reputation growing up in a small town, moved away and became a successful philanthropist, then returned to that town years later you would find that same reputation has not entirely dissipated. It’s doubly bad when the nature of parole requires you to tell any potential employers of your status. You can’t relocate and you can’t pretend you are anything but an ex-con and accept what little life has for such people.

This movie doesn’t show any possible light at the end of this tunnel, just the bleak inevitability of relapse. This is personified in the character of Chuck, a convict who has no notions of being anything, but. He is pessimistic right from the start and ends up being the only life line left for Cliff after every legitimate option is exhausted. He also is the final downfall for Cliff who goes in knowing it may destroy him but also hoping it will only be a temporary setback that will save his brother and, if he is lucky, himself, too. But this is a Hays Code era film and crime cannot go unpunished here. It makes for a sad and somewhat depressing finale uplifted only by the fact that Cliff’s acts save his brother from a similar fate. It is a solid film that skirts the line drawn by Will H. Hays and his Hollywood Code, showing that crime doesn’t pay and that those who sin and repent will never be able to crawl out from it no matter how sincere they are. It’s a tragedy not unlike that of Jean Valjean and his conflict with Javert. In that novel Javert cannot see past the man who once stole a loaf of bread for his starving family. Here it’s all of society who cannot see past the past transgression. It’s a bleak world presented here that could almost be too bleak at times, yet never quite overwhelms us with it.