A highly entertaining, fast-moving film with endlessly fascinating subject matter, The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936) is also one of director John Ford's less-talked-about pictures. Now that it's available on DVD as part of the mammoth "Ford at Fox" box set and as a stand-alone disc, it has a chance of being rediscovered.

Warner Baxter stars as Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the doctor who unwittingly helped John Wilkes Booth mere hours after Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. (At least it's "unwittingly" in the movie; there remains to this day some doubt as to just how innocent Dr. Mudd was.) A compelling opening sequence shows Lincoln performing an act of reconciliation by asking a band to play "Dixie" for an assembled crowd (a true event) before taking his seat in Ford's Theater, Washington, DC. The assassination is depicted true to historical fact, and Booth then makes his escape, his leg broken in his fall to the theater stage. He rides into Maryland and, needing a doctor, happens upon Dr. Mudd's home, where the good doctor sets the leg and Booth is off once more. The next morning, soldiers arrive, deduce that Booth was there, and arrest Mudd.

Then, in a sequence astonishingly relevant to the world of 2007, Mudd and seven other prisoners are led, hooded and shackled, into a courtoom where military judges have been instructed to think more about placating angry mobs than about dispensing proper justice. The concept of reasonable doubt is "an obnoxious creation of legal nonsense," they have been told by the Assistant Secretary of War. The prisoners are to be tried in a military rather than a civil court because their punishment must be swift and hard in order to prevent any further public discontent. They will not be allowed to mount a defense, or even speak.

It doesn't matter that at least some of the accused are innocent. A few are executed and others are sent to prison, in Mudd's case for life. Off he goes to Fort Jefferson, on Dry Tortugas near the Florida keys and sort of an American Devil's Island, where the rest of the drama plays out. Harry Carey plays the Fort commander, but it's John Carradine who really runs things there, and he is deliciously evil and nasty in one of the most memorable performances of his career. Warner Baxter as Mudd gives perhaps THE best performance of his own career, and the rest of the cast are also excellent: Gloria Stuart as Mudd's feisty, attractive wife; Ernest Whitman as Mudd's slave who goes to Fort Jefferson to help him (the role is similar to the one he would later play in Jesse James, 1939, in which he is equally superb); and John Ford's brother Francis in a bit.

The movie is beautifully shot by Bert Glennon, who would go on to shoot Stagecoach (1939), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and Wagon Master (1950), among others, for Ford. The Prisoner of Shark Island moves very quickly, but there are still some great, highly pictorial "Fordian" moments, such as the slow closing of the gates at Fort Jefferson as a bugler plays taps, and the lowering of a veil over Lincoln's face - a purely visual expression of not only the death of a great man but the poignant close of a chapter of American history. It's downright poetic in its simplicity.

Fox Home Entertainment's DVD boasts superb image and sound. Extras include a restoration comparison, an interactive press book, and photo galleries. There's also a commentary track in which film historian Anthony Slide offers biographical sketches of the cast and throws in factual context to the story so we know what was embellished for the sake of drama. Slide does err, however, in claiming that the expression "His name is mud" refers to this Dr. Mudd. The expression actually first appeared in print in 1820, 45 years before Lincoln's assassination, and refers to British slang of the time for "dope," and later on, "scab."

Slide also at times sarcastically repeats pieces of dialogue right after we've heard them as a way of lamenting their political incorrectness, which is annoying and unnecessary and tells us more about him than about the movie. He's better when he makes observations such as the following about an attempted-escape sequence: "The impressive camera angles help divert our attention away from the artificiality of the sets."

Twentieth Century-Fox had only very recently been formed from the merger of the two studios when this picture was made. The opening credits announce "A Twentieth Century Production," though the copyright credit reads "Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation."

To order The Prisoner of Shark Island, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold