I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A powerful indictment not just of the chain gangs, the penal system and the uncaring society that allowed such barbarities to flourish, but of politicians and their servant bureaucrats whose promises and assurances are so often deliberate lies and distortions. The tone of the movie is surprisingly anarchistic with the range of foes allied against our common-man hero (and he is just that, a hero in the classic heroic mould) extending all the way from the state governor down to his own wife. Every public official, no matter how humble his station, is suspect. And even the hero's brother, a sanctimonious do-gooder with an implicit trust in worthless conservative values, is presented most unsympathetically. Aside from his mother and his Chicago lawyer (who is presented fleetingly but significantly as a paid advocate), the hero has no friends but an ex-jailbird (Allen Jenkins), a chance prostitute (Noel Francis) and an inveterate, long-term convict (Edward Ellis), an anarchist by name and deed. To drive the message vividly home, the director has not only drawn forceful studies from his entire cast but has handled his scenes in short, sharply etched strokes, not a moment wasted. The pace is so fast that it's difficult to take in all the script's pointers on a single viewing. But if the dialogue is terse, the action scenes are even more taut, the chases presented with a frenzy that leaves the viewer gasping. It would be a pleasure to go through the players, one by one, handing out commendations to each, - the principals, Muni, Ellis, Jenkins, Foster, are all dynamic, though Hale Hamilton overdoes the purring unctuousness of the guileless clergyman whose naive stupidity and lack of cynicism is partly responsible for the hero's dilemma, - but I'll content myself with one: Glenda Farrell, in the best acting of her career, as the come-on who turns back-stabber. A wonderfully realistic and defiantly convincing performance!

Early on while watching 'I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang', you feel it will have real substance and a meaning not often seen in movies from this time period. It starts with a vet returning from WWI disillusioned with the prospect of being a factory worker for the rest of his life, and his mother supporting him in his vision to become an engineer (quipping he needs to 'find himself', which I found to be about 30 years ahead of its time). The movie transitions into a harsh prison film after the man unwittingly becomes an accomplice to a holdup, and in exposing the cruelty of the chain gang system, it gained great notoriety. Director Mervyn LeRoy tells the story with a perfect sense of pace, as well as balance – the film is tough and gritty, but never gratuitous. When the man escapes prison, it's clear he has physical relations with a couple of women, but in what must have shocked conservatives at the time, appears honorable in being honest and telling one of them that they both know "it wasn't love". And in the larger sense, this is what the film turns on its head – conventional notions of honor, and justice. The main point made is that those who run a prison system which metes out cruel and unusual punishment are indeed as bad as those they imprison (or worse!). We hear the age-old argument for harsh punishment from a prison official at a parole hearing – that it not only serves justice, but deters crime and also helps reform prisoners – and this argument is not challenged, at least verbally, by any other character – and yet while watching, we feel and know it to be wrong. Modern studies have shown it to be wrong, and yet the argument persists. LeRoy doesn't hit us over the head with this though, he just shows us the truth – and it was very interesting to find out afterwards that the film was quite true to a real-life story, and banned in the state of Georgia. I also found it refreshing that the African-American convicts are shown as strong and dignified, at one point segregated and looking into the camera with somber, intelligent eyes.I have to also say that Paul Muni is fantastic in the lead role, and more than worthy of his Academy Award nomination. He seems to me to be an early form of James Dean or Marlon Brando, and delivers a great performance. His last line in the film is haunting, and reminds us that we should be asking, what are the ultimate goals of the prison system? Pretty impressive for 1932, and without a doubt, a landmark film.

These older movies continue to surprise me. I really didn't think this movie would be able to capture my attention but I was proved wrong. "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" had a great plot that was able to make the viewer see what the director wanted them to see. This really showed the harsh reality of the chain gang and made me wince at the horrors of the time. I was really invested in the plot with great effects like the loud cracks of whips and the excitement and panic if being chased by hounds. I also enjoyed how at the end of the movie he blew up a bridge, something he enjoyed building, in order to try and escape towards freedom. This movie did exactly what its intentions were by making me, the viewer, hate the chain gang punishment.

The only saving grace of this film was the fact it was based on a true story. There was not one other thing I enjoyed about this film. I thought the acting was poor, and the movie definitely dragged on far longer than it needed to. Almost all of the characters annoyed me (especially the main character's brother), and as awful as this is to say, I spent the majority of the film hoping that he would be captured and sent back to prison, JUST so the movie would be over soon. However, when they filmed the main character underwater, I thought that was something that was very different and neat for that time period.