Convict 13 marks the intrusion, once again in Keaton’s work, of the spectacle within the spectacle. But unlike Sherlock Jr. or The Cameraman, this time it is a scandalous intrusion, because we are shown a capital execution that is filmed with the same objectivity as a sports competition… One of the fundamental characteristics of Keaton’s genius is to preserve, in the face of excess, a classical rigour: he thus transforms the original outrageousness of the caricature into the merciless dryness of an observation, all the more terrible
because, unlike Chaplin, emotion is not tolerated. Thus, Keaton’s itinerary in this film conveys the most pessimistic of morals, that of interchangeability; one can be hanged, watch being hanged or help hanging. A convict, or a policeman, are no more than men dressed as convicts and policemen. Keaton, in one or the other, retains the same profound and sad unity of gaze, under the multiplicity of appearances.

Jean-André Fieschi, “Cahiers du cinema”, n. 130, April 1962

Convict 13 was restored from a nitrate print preserved in the Lobster Films collection and an incomplete 35mm safety dupe negative made from Czech material preserved at the Cinémathèque française. Some short fragments were added from two triacetate 16mm prints from a private collection. Intertitles were reconstructed according to the original font, based on the translation of original French and Czech cards.