Fury

"Fury" was legendary German director Fritz Lang's first American film. He spoke English, but not well enough at the time to write fluid dialogue, so Lang worked on the script with writer Bartlett Cormack, who did the actual writing. Lang and Cormack based this morality tale of mob psychology and revenge on a story outline by Norman Krasna entitled "Mob Rule", but they incorporated some elements of a real lynching case that had recently occurred in San Jose, California. Lang's intention was to give the film a realistic, documentary feel. "Fury" gives the impression of looking at the laws... more

A very unusual M-G-M film from 1936: because of its theme of social consciousness, it seems much more a likely candidate for Warner Brothers. It's a dilly with an outstanding performance by Tracy as the wrong man: En route to see his fiancee, Katherine (Sylvia Sidney) Joe Wheeler (Spencer Tracy) is arrested as a suspected kidnapper and is jailed pending trial. The evidence against him is strickly circumstantial: he possess a bill from a ransom statement. Then a mob forms around the jail, but Sheriff Ellis (Walter Brennan) manages to disband them & send them home... And that's all I'm going... more

The film begins as a fairly routine romance: Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney fall in love, are forced to separate for a time, and plan their reunion. All goes well until Tracy is arrested on a kidnapping charge. When Tracy is taken to the small-town jail, the local gossip begins. From this point, the film becomes a gritty, raw study of mob violence. The direction and action are relentless. Watching Tracy's reaction to the happenings around him is one of the pleasures of the film. Compare the way the local people act to the recent acts of violence we see today. (Have things changed much?)... more