Based on a magazine story "Mob Rule" the rights to which MGM owned, the frustrated refugee director Fritz Lang crafted an indictment of lynching that was of considerable relevance in the United States, where an anti-lynching law was blocked by Southern states' senators, as well as to the Nazi Germany from which Lang had fled (before the Kristallnacht). Like Lang's next movie, "You Only Live Once," and more than a few Alfred Hitchcock movies, "Fury" shows a man blamed for a crime he did not commit relentlessly hunted. (Lang's previous films "M" and "Liliom" show men who did commit crimes hunted down by numerous official and unofficial pursuers.)

Joe Wilson, played by Spencer Tracy in his most Everyman guise, is an upright citizen, urging his brother not to work for gangsters, and going to another town himself to find work. This leads to buying a car to visit his fiancee, Katherine Grant (Sylvia Sydney). The car is stopped by a folksy bigot deputy played by Walter Brennan. Joe has a five-dollar bill that had been part of a kidnapping ransom and is arrested.

News of the arrest spreads. The $5 quickly grows in rumor to $5000 (half the ransom) .Ordinary citizens are shown working each other's outrage up at someone who has not been indicted, let alone tried. The title fury builds, and the jail is attacked by a lynch mob (there is a particularly iconic shot of a crazed woman throwing the first torch, and there is also dynamite).

The real kidnappers are then apprehended, leaving those who had burned down the jail to blame the police for having arrested an innocent man (rather than themselves for seeking to kill him without trial.

The second half of the movie is a didactic courtroom drama showing the difficulty of prosecuting those participating in lynch mobs. Newsreel footage of the attack on the jail includes the female torch thrower. One leading character turns out to rival Kriemhild in relentless thirst for revenge (revealing which one would be a plot spoiler).

Louis B. Mayer was shocked that a social problem picture (the kind the Warner Brothers was allocated in contrast to the pretty costume pictures filled with moralistic uplift Mayer liked) was commercially successful. Although I think it is a good thing that the movie made it possible for Lang to work more, I find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm for the movie. Partly, this is because I find Spencer Tracy's smug screen persona unpleasant. Partly, it is because of the excessive contrivance of the plot. Partly, it is that Sylvia Sydney is bland(er here than in "Live"). However, like all Lang films, there are many striking visual compositions (not just the woman with the burning torch). Lang worked with a master cinematographer in the person of Joseph Ruttenberg (Gaslight, Gigi, The Great Waltz.

In contrast, I like the also somewhat-contrived next Lang movie, "You Only Live Once." Henry Fonda is more my conception of the American Everyman, even when, as in "Once," he is not completely innocent. Both movies suggest that one should not expect trust and magnanimity from those falsely accused and nearly killed either by a mob or by the wheels of (in)justice. (The relevance to the many Iraquis pulled in and in some cases tortured by Bush's conquering troops makes viewing both movies uncomfortable here and now.)

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This a belated contribution tof Lean 'n Mean III. Reviews of more Lang movies are on the way...

Recommended:
Yes