Stuart Rosenberg puts a simple yet effective visual touches on this film to make it his own. One notable symbol Rosenberg uses early in Luke’s time at the prison is that of the doorway. The director has the door always lead to some other form of prison, e.g. from the bunks to the mess hall and from the prison yard into the door of the truck that takes them to the prison of the full day’s work ahead of the men on the road. The last doorway is the most symbolic in that it is the only door that Luke cannot cross as the boss won’t let him. It is the doorway into the truck with his ailing mother. He desires to be inside the flatbed with her, but by not being allowed it reveals a theme that the director sticks to: that Luke only goes through a door that leads to another sort of prison and never to a practical freedom even if it’s only momentary.
Rosenberg also uses road signs and signals as a way of showing the state of the character(s) in a particular scene. We see this in the opening scene when Luke chops of the heads of “expired” parking meters, then we see the stop sign after the gang finishes tarring the road two hours early and there’s still daylight and lastly when Luke is hauled off by the Captain to the prison hospital we see the street signal go from green to red, indicating Luke’s passing.
Finally, Rosenberg uses Christian symbolism to compare Luke’s character to that of Jesus. We see him lay on his back with his arms stretched out as if on a cross after eating 50 eggs. Rosenberg also sets up the moments before Luke is shot in a fashion similar to Jesus being in the Garden of Gethsemane as Luke’s garden is the abandoned church he is found alone in. And the director ends the film with a shot of two roads becoming a cross and superimposing the ripped up picture of Luke over top of the road showing where it has been torn up and put together. And both images look like crosses. Rosenberg is able to effectively use images as a way to reveal deeper meaning in the story and to give the audience an understanding of what has happened to the character through the symbols rather than blatantly showing what has happened. This leads to a light yet direct touch that the director has on the picture’s themes while revealing his point of view as well.
