Review of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) by Everett J — 20 Apr 2008

[i]I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

[/i][font=Arial]dir. Mervyn LeRoy.

Lousy circumstances lead a man into the depths of hell he can neither comprehend nor tolerate. Paul Muni stars in this story that explores the nature of justice, punishment, and the art of falling apart.

Muni plays James Allen, a veteran of WWII who comes back to his hometown where both his mother (Louise Carter) and brother, the good Reverend (Hale Hamilton) want him to take up the offer given him by his old boss and return to his job in a shoe factory. Allen obliges them but soon it's apparent he's more interested in a bridge that is being built across the way. He leaves his mother and ventures out into the world, taking odd construction jobs along the way but never being able to keep any of them for a variety of reasons. He lands in Chicago and meets Pete (Preston Foster) who entices him to a nearby Deli with the promise of a hamburger. Once inside the scene unfolds casually with the jovial deli clerk tossing a couple of patties on the grill. Quickly, Pete pulls out a gun and forces James to remove all the money from the till. Pete is shot dead by the cops and James is captured. He's eventually sentenced to 15 years hard labour and ends up in the titular chain gang. He serves his time for a while before breaking out.

The rest of the film follows James as he slowly builds up his life to the point that he is considered a credit to society and a man of significance and integrity. He starts dating Marie (Glenda Farrell) but decides he cannot love her and tries to break it off. A letter arrives from James's brother warning him that the police are still after him and they want to send him back to the chain gang. Marie promises not to tell as long as James marries her. He does and they manage to tolerate each other for several years before James meets another woman named Helen (Helen Vinson. This time, Marie is not so complacent and immediately notifies the authorities and James is again arrested.

There is an extraordinary amount of tension at various points in this film. As James attempts to make his escapes, the viewer is transported into a realm of confusion, despair, and sheer recklessness. Muni plays many scenes with his eyes, which convey a tortured melancholy that does not abate. James is wounded first by his inability to land a good job then by the unfortunate events that cloud his past. He becomes what everyone wants him to be--a notable man with a considerable amount of authority--but by merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time he in ground down into powder. When he is apprehended for the second time, he is promised parole if he would only serve ninety days as a clerk. When he arrives at the facility he realizes the state lied to him and he is forced back onto the chain gang. After the ninety days, his parole is denied and he is again told if he works for a year and is a model citizen that a parole is guaranteed. After a year, his parole is again denied and out of desperation he steals a truck and manages to escape once again. This film critiques the penal system with it's perpetual policy of brutality and penchant for cruel and unusual punishment. The prisoners in this film are worked like dogs for sixteen hours per day, seven days per week, with no hope of let up for the duration of their sentence. It breaks one man who collapses at the work site and eventually dies. James is they eyes of the audience who sees the whole plan laid out in all its satanic glory; these are not animals who need to be broken in order to be corrected. The film makes this point quite strongly as it questions whether a man can shake off a criminal past in order to reach a level of civic legitimacy.

Paul Muni possesses a tremendous amount of charisma and obvious charm throughout this film. Even at the characters lowest, their is a dynamism to Muni that easily comes across. His moments of abjection are totems to despair and confusion and they are played by Muni with enough punch to avoid melodrama or sentimentality. They are merely sharp edges in a life when mostly everything else has ebbed away. Regardless of James's circumstances, he is presented as an upstanding man who simply needs one tiny break in order to make good on his obvious promise. As Marie, Glenda Farrell has a highly developed sense of comedic timing as she is transformed from the mere infatuation into the beleaguered wife. Her delivery is curt, smart, and highly effective. Helen Vinson gives her character a coy, flirtatious quality that is nevertheless innocent and unassuming.

Overall, this film explores the criminal justice system and its pretensions regarding their ability to reduce crime by physically breaking the wills of their detainees. James Allen is a character whose ordeal is something that might happen to any one of us. He is a law-abiding citizen who gets mixed up in some awful business and is unable to make his case because the system is set up so that he doesn't have a voice. His protestations of innocence are necessarily ignored and he is all but stripped of his humanity in the process. He is thrust into a world of discomfort because the courts simply cannot believe that a worthless bum could have ever been the victim of such circumstances as he found himself in. This is in direct contrast to when he was somebody considered important. At that time, highly placed officials wrote letters to the proper authorities imploring them not to send James back to the chain gang. One of the men arguing for a return to the chain gang used James as an example of how the system works. After all, he became a viable person after several months breaking rocks so it obviously does work.

[/font].