Birdman of Alcatraz

Directed by John Frankenheimer. With Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter.

This is a beautiful movie! It is about a young man who develops a friendship with birds while spending 45 years in solitary confinement. (Also interesting because one can see how different solitary confinement used to be). It is based on a true story.

The movie is famous, yes. But this is one of the good greats! Worth seeing. Quiet but touching. I would not say it is an especially deep movie but it is just so much better than what Hollywood makes today. No obvious good guy, bad guy with the happy ending. The characters are characters, real and meaningful, and their relationships with each other present a complexity and subtlety U.S. moves seems to have lost.

It is historically beautiful both as a story and as a movie.