I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
Heady, Fast, Social Justice without the Justice--Muni is brilliant
Filmed a year after Howard Hawks's Scarface (also released 1932), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang shows the other half of Paul Muni's brilliance. There is no question that both films are masterpieces of their type, with Mervyn LeRoy pulling together a lot of periods and kinds of milieu into a coherent and fast narrative for the later one. But I think both films owe their critical success to Muni's presence on screen, a true Brando or Gable kind of figure with a short list of films to show for his abilities. Watch these both. If Scarface is more dazzling (almost to the point of being dazzling for its own sake), I Am a Fugitive is more moving, and Muni makes us really feel for his situation, or series of situations, as the film proceeds.
The story is based on an autobiographical book written by Robert E. Burns, a man in prison at the time of filming, and one sign of the success of LeRoy and Muni combined is that Burns managed to be released in the film's wake. And to some extent that was the goal of the film--not just the fate of Burns, but the public awareness of the cruelty of parts of the American justice system. There are no secrets about the agenda--it is announced in large type at the start of the movie--but it worked. And works to this day. Of course, O Brother Where Art Thou (2000) owes a lot to this movie, but the humor in the original is incidental, or meant to give life to the characters, not as a way of making the film especially funny. The drumbeat of horrors makes laughing very temporary, and the social realism strikes me, 70 years later, as more or less real.
Jaded (and brilliant) critics like Pauline Kael might refer to this kind of socially concerned film as "naive," but the movie strikes me as necessarily simple rather than blind or stupid in any sense. And it isn't that watching it is simple--there is so much going on, a lot of characters (including as series of women who come and go with surprising rapidity). It's more that the point is simple--chain gangs are cruel. And not unusual, back then. On the level of film-making, the film is sophisticated, rising above its message if necessary.
There is one last element worth mentioning, and that has to do with it being made two years before the Hays code got modified and enforced to its famous repressive heights. This allowed the key, amazing, beautiful ending to survive into the theaters. If you haven't seen it I can say no more, but it's the kind of ending that the censors would have abolished, along with some of the rest of the movie, for its frank violence, its suggestion of sexual indecency, etc. So for another great example of "pre-code" brilliance, look here. A masterpiece for its time, and for ours.
Heady, Fast, Social Justice without the Justice--Muni is brilliant
Filmed a year after Howard Hawks's Scarface (also released 1932), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang shows the other half of Paul Muni's brilliance. There is no question that both films are masterpieces of their type, with Mervyn LeRoy pulling together a lot of periods and kinds of milieu into a coherent and fast narrative for the later one. But I think both films owe their critical success to Muni's presence on screen, a true Brando or Gable kind of figure with a short list of films to show for his abilities. Watch these both. If Scarface is more dazzling (almost to the point of being dazzling for its own sake), I Am a Fugitive is more moving, and Muni makes us really feel for his situation, or series of situations, as the film proceeds.
The story is based on an autobiographical book written by Robert E. Burns, a man in prison at the time of filming, and one sign of the success of LeRoy and Muni combined is that Burns managed to be released in the film's wake. And to some extent that was the goal of the film--not just the fate of Burns, but the public awareness of the cruelty of parts of the American justice system. There are no secrets about the agenda--it is announced in large type at the start of the movie--but it worked. And works to this day. Of course, O Brother Where Art Thou (2000) owes a lot to this movie, but the humor in the original is incidental, or meant to give life to the characters, not as a way of making the film especially funny. The drumbeat of horrors makes laughing very temporary, and the social realism strikes me, 70 years later, as more or less real.
Jaded (and brilliant) critics like Pauline Kael might refer to this kind of socially concerned film as "naive," but the movie strikes me as necessarily simple rather than blind or stupid in any sense. And it isn't that watching it is simple--there is so much going on, a lot of characters (including as series of women who come and go with surprising rapidity). It's more that the point is simple--chain gangs are cruel. And not unusual, back then. On the level of film-making, the film is sophisticated, rising above its message if necessary.
There is one last element worth mentioning, and that has to do with it being made two years before the Hays code got modified and enforced to its famous repressive heights. This allowed the key, amazing, beautiful ending to survive into the theaters. If you haven't seen it I can say no more, but it's the kind of ending that the censors would have abolished, along with some of the rest of the movie, for its frank violence, its suggestion of sexual indecency, etc. So for another great example of "pre-code" brilliance, look here. A masterpiece for its time, and for ours.