1932 Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
A World War I veteran’s dreams of becoming a master architect evaporate in the cold light of economic realities. Things get even worse when he’s falsely convicted of a crime and sent to work on a chain gang.
Paul Muni Glenda Farrell Helen Vinson Noel Francis Preston Foster Allen Jenkins Berton Churchill Edward Ellis David Landau Hale Hamilton Sally Blane Louise Carter Everett Brown Willard Robertson Robert McWade Robert Warwick William Le Maire Charles Middleton Dennis O'Keefe Wallis Clark Erville Alderson Irving Bacon Reginald Barlow James Bell Frederick Burton A.S. Byron Charles McAvoy Eddy Chandler G. Pat Collins Show All…
Jeg er en flygtning, Soy un fugitivo, Olen vainottu kahlekarkuri, Ik, een vluchteling, Eu Sou um Evadido, Я – беглый каторжник, Szökevény vagyok, Eimai enas drapetis, Je suis un évadé, Ben bir pranga kaçagiyim, Večiti begunac, Jagd auf James A., Побег с каторги, 仮面の米国, Είμαι ένας δραπέτης, 亡命者
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Job Manager: “So, what’s your name?”
James Allen, escaped convict: “Allen…Allen James.”
A true pioneer of quick thinking.
Not quite the O Brother, Where Art Thou? prequel that I was expecting. Was really tough to hear any of the bluegrass songs over the sounds of whips, chains, abuse of authority, societal injustice, and inescapable systemic oppression.
This bruising, brutal slab of social realism was made during that brief period when Hollywood had the opportunity, and the inclination, to take aim at the nation’s ills. In 1932-3, films like Heroes for Sale, Wild Boys of the Road, The Mayor of Hell and Gold Diggers of 1933 (ostensibly a throwaway musical) held a mirror up to Depression-era America, in all its cruelty, drudgery and despair. Packed with righteous rage, these explosive movies went off like dynamite, helping to set the national agenda and changing laws and lives. Then the Hays Code came in, and the mainstream simply wouldn’t touch progressive pictures (with the very rare exception, like Ford and Zanuck’s The Grapes of Wrath in 1940).
Paul Muni…
exceptionally dark and angry pre-code crime drama/prison escape/social realist pulp movie that was designed to raise awareness of the brutal conditions of american labor camps but is also a sprawling, tense piece of hollywood entertainment as well. paul muni is incredible at doing the desperate, wiry routine required here as the movie stacks horrifying, dehumanizing physical punishment and absurd, “legal” injustice against him one after the other until they’ve become completely entwined. the explosive breakout car chase climax in this is insane and the ending is about as bleak and sad as they come. “we need their permission to sweat.”
[35mm]
"The State's promise didn't mean anything!"
It all starts with the title - confrontational, bold, no time to mince words but enough to make the point clear - it's not 'Chain Gang' or 'Fugitive' or 'Jailbreak' or whatever, in favor of a simple declarative statement that's impossible to ignore. The whole movie is like that, one of the earliest examples of super-cinema in which image and sound combine for a tactile, visceral experience, as uncompromising towards the viewer as it is towards the social injustice it exists to illuminate.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a brutal and tragic melodrama which was also one of the first of Warner Brothers’ movies to depict a social conscience. It stars Paul Muni as a wrongfully condemned criminal on a chain gang who finally breaks out and heads to Chicago. It’s adapted by Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes from Robert Elliott Burns's autobiography and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, who delivers an authentic and straightforward film. It recognises the dreadful consequences of the Great Depression and evolves to assume an aggressive look at the unjust and cruel treatment of prisoners in the penitentiary system following World War I.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a deeply impressive piece of filmmaking, an undeniably hard-hitting work that must have left audiences in 1932 sitting in stunned silence at not only its abrupt, hopeless ending, but also the uncompromising darkness that runs through its veins. It also, however, effectively highlights a number of blind spots that were present at the time even at socially aware studios like Warner Bros. — studios sincerely interested in education, and highlighting injustice.
First and foremost, it's crucial to recognize that James Allen (Paul Muni) is a white, decorated war veteran. (I realize that this is also true of Robert Elliott Burns, the man on whose autobiography and life the story was based.)…
Haunts initially in the classical depiction of prison as mental jail where rehab is but a joke men tell each other when brutal punishment is on the pecking line and the system relies on making man slave at the risk he turn into a model citizen. Before lingering tenfold when this unravels into the tale of one wrongly accused mans search for justice that finds him turning into the very thing he was pooched for in the first place.
Muni is a personal revelation, transcending old-timey info-dumps as should-be architect James Allen, his soft-grizzled mug a timeworn vessel for humanity beaten out and stripped free by the arms we call our own. Choosing actions before words when words just aren’t…
3rd Mervyn LeRoy (after Gold Diggers of 1933 and The Bad Seed)
One of the strongest things about Chain Gang is how authentic it is. Based on the memoirs of Robert Elliott Burns, it does not shy away from the brutal nature of the system itself, with LeRoy shooting on location to capture the dirty, dusty nature of the Georgia South, though I'd bet my money it was shot in California. The images themselves are Spartan black and white, appropriately devoid of glamour and with almost a documentary feel, especially in the way that LeRoy frames the convict's day through title cards. Muni immersed himself into the role of James Allen, meeting with prison wardens and chain gang guards to…
The fact that I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is based on a true story only helps make the story even more devastating. It's really a provocative and heartbreaking film about law and punishment. Mervyn LeRoy really directs an amazing piece of work here and Paul Muni does an equal great job in the lead as he did in Scarface the same year. What a year he had starring in two of the most important movies to come out of 1932!
I Am a Fugitive from an American Gulag.
This is as biting a piece of social criticism as I’ve ever seen. It chains and horsewhips the viewer to empathy and outrage. It's saturated with a nihilism that would disappear from Hollywood for 40 years. The State turns a man from a bridge-builder into at bridge-destroyer. From stealing at only at gunpoint, to stealing to survive and dissolving into darkness. A testament to what an earlier Robert Burns (and the real James Allen’s namesake) called “man’s inhumanity to man.”
Society has him locked in a prison or on the run. Locked in the prison of a factory. Chained to a bunk. Chained to a blackmailing vamp. He can’t escape so he…
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932. This is excellent. It was pre-Code. Ferocious movie. Paul Muni, incredibly intense. It was really the best picture I think Mervyn LeRoy ever did, by far. Maybe the production code got in the way after that […] No spoilers, but the ending of Chain Gang, I couldn’t forget about it for days. —James Gray
Good grief, this film. No mercy. Wasn’t prepared. Assumed since it was made in ‘32 that it couldn’t be too strong. Wrong. What a living nightmare. Makes you squint & recoil. Involuntary empathy. “A guy with your nerves gots the breaks comin’ to him.” Man.
Based on a true story—the autobiography of Robert E Burns—I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is stomach-churning like visceral Hitchcock. Super lean. Nothing extra. Paul Muni’s great. Really felt for the guy. All he wanted was a job he cared about. And a burger.
