For this adaptation of a psychologist’s memoir, in which the author recalls his time using modern psychological techniques to help San Quentin inmates, director Fregonese shifts the focus of the story onto the prisoners. Produced by Stanley Kramer and shot on location at San Quentin, My Six Convicts is genuine auteurist cinema, where, according to film critic and Il Cinema Ritrovato curator Ehshan Khoshbakht, “the controlled space of the prison becomes a metaphor for the filmmaking itself, in which every element is determined by Fregonese, especially in his mosaic-like arrangement of the violence inherent in spaces of confinement…eroding any sense of comfort and belonging.”
