An uncharacteristically trenchant indictment of mob rule for the usually family-oriented MGM. Despite studio interference, Fritz Lang, in his first Hollywood outing, succeeded in making a penetrating study of injustice and inhumanity with Spencer Tracy delivering a memorable performance
as an innocent man who's wrongly accused of a sensational crime and transformed into a malevolent force of vengeance.
Spencer Tracy is Joe Wheeler, a honest guy trying to earn enough money to get married to his devoted fiancee, Katherine Grant (Sylvia Sidney). While driving to meet up with Katherine, Joe gets picked up by the cops. Arrested as a suspected kidnaper, he is imprisoned in a small-town jail pending
trial. He is damned by circumstantial evidence and rampant rumours. A mob gathers and heads for the jail. The sheriff gets nervous and calls the governor begging him to put the National Guard on alert as he does not have enough guards to withstand a full-scale assault on his small jail. However,
the governor's advisers steer him away from the potentially controversial situation. Meanwhile, back at the jail, things quickly get out of hand.
Lang brings striking expressionist touches to the social problem picture with expressive shadowplay and stylized subjective fantasy sequences. This was his favorite American film and rightfully so, for it demonstrates his directorial genius in wasting not a frame of film, telling his story with
sharp cross-cutting between victim and tormentors, while unraveling the mindless and murderous passion of a mob out of control. leave a comment