Film Review: Fury (1936)

Citizens of USA and other Western countries take great pride in freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law and other historical achievements they take for granted. It usually takes an outsider to notice that such lofty ideals might be at odds with more prosaic reality. Austrian director Fritz Lang was one such outsider when he left for 1930s Europe because of Nazism and brewing world war and restarted his career in Hollywood. His American debut, 1936 drama Fury, is considered one of the most politically charged works of Classic Hollywood.

Protagonist of the film is Joe Wilson (played by Spencer Tracy), car mechanic from Chicago who wants to marry his long time girlfriend Katherine Grant (played by Sylvia Sidney). Both of them lack money, so they have to work in different cities. After a year, Joe has earned enough to buy himself a car and finally bring Katherine to the altar. While traveling, he ends around provincial town of Strand where “Bugs” Meyers (played by Walter Brennan), sheriff’s deputy, arrests him because his description and other details match member of the gang who kidnapped a girl. Joe is brought to the sheriff (played by Edward Ellis) who keeps him in jail before the whole matter is cleared. Citizens of Strand, however, are convinced that Joe is actual kidnapper, with rumours quickly embellishing the story and creating a mob determined to exact their own brand of justice. Sheriff tries to protect Joe but he and his deputies are outnumbered and can’t prevent lynchers from setting up jail on fire and destroying it with dynamite. Soon afterwards real kidnappers are caught and confess the crime. Lynching of an innocent man turns into major scandal and Adams (played by Walter Abel), ambitious district attorney, prosecutes 22 members of the lynch mob for murder, with each defendant to be executed if found guilty. Joe is actually alive; he miraculously survived the explosion, but he is now in hiding. As an embittered man who hides with the help of his brothers, he wants nothing but revenge and wants men who tried to kill him to suffer as much he did.

Lynching in USA is traditionally associated with South and most of the victims were African Americans. The real life event that inspired Norman Krasna to write a story that would ultimately become script for Fury actually occurred in California and the victims were both white. It happened in 1933 when thousands of people (including former Hollywood child star Jackie Coogan) invaded jail in San Jose and lynched Harold Thurmond and John Holmes, two men arrested for kidnapping and vicious murder of Brooke Hart, well-liked son and heir of local tycoon. The whole affair has deeply divided the America between those who commended justice being done and those who were appalled by Californians’ descent into barbarism. Those debates and his own experience of witnessing progressive and enlightened Weimar Germany being seduced by radical street agitators probably appealed to Lang, who had used motive of vigilante justice in M five years earlier.

The talent that made M into the classic of world cinema can be observed in Fury, especially in the scenes that very effectively show how misunderstandings and rumours quickly turn otherwise fine and respected citizens of small town into bloodthirsty lynch mob. However, inevitable comparisons between two films make Lang’s Hollywood debut clearly inferior. The main reason can be found in desire of producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz not to ruffle too much feathers. Film about lynching was already something quite unexpected for MGM, studio specialised for escapist entertainment and least likely to experiment with social themes and explicit political messages. The closest Fury came to actually addressing lynching problem in America was the statistics used by character of Adams during the trial scene and, implicitly, presence of African American characters. Anything more explicit would not pass the notorious censors of Hays Office and the script, co-written by Lang and Bartlett Cormack, conformed to the strict rules of MPAA Production Code. Character of Joe Wilson, played by Spencer Tracy in one of his more demanding roles, begins as straight morally uptight character who later turns into monster not very different from lynchers that tried to kill him. If Tracy’s character remained as such (as Lang originally wanted), Fury would have been much more realistic, more effective but also a very bleak and depressive film. Script, which have already added some implausible melodrama by having protagonist losing his pet dog during lynching and miraculously surviving explosion, ends with another melodramatic twist in which Joe ultimately does the right thing for the sake of happy future with Katherine. This happy ending was forced on Lang by studio, but in this case studio was proven right at the box office. Fury is, despite artistic and other compromises, a good film, although not the first title that comes to mind when someone mentions filmography of Fritz Lang.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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