I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

In director Mervyn LeRoy's (and Warner Brothers') crime/prison drama (with a message), it was a gritty, uncompromising, critical, and combative look at the unjust and barbaric treatment of criminals in a southern state's prison system following World War I. The harsh and grim melodramatic film was one of the first of Warner Bros.' films of social conscience, reform and protest during the early 30s (at the height of the Depression-era).

It told about the brutality, barbarism and injustice of prison life. It was effective in bringing about and promoting social reform. The plot was based upon Robert E. Burns' 1932 autobiographical story: "I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang" - serialized in True Detective Mysteries. In the plot, a WWI veteran who faced unemployment was unjustly convicted of a petty robbery, and then twice served and escaped from a southern chain gang as a hunted fugitive during the 1920s. One of the film's taglines described his second escape:

"Six sticks of dynamite that blasted his way to freedom...and awoke America's conscience!"

The film earned three Academy Award nominations (with no wins): Best Picture (it lost to Cavalcade), Best Actor (Muni lost his second nomination to Charles Laughton for his performance in The Private Life of Henry VIII ), and Best Sound.

• WWI unemployed veteran James Allen (Paul Muni) looked increasingly like a transient, penniless bum; he made an unsuccessful attempt to pawn off his war medal, a Belgian Croix de Guerre, when the owner already had a drawer case full of medals from other unemployed, vagrant veterans
• Allen was convinced to join vagrant drifter-tramp Pete (Preston Foster) to go to a lunch-wagon/diner for a handout of hamburgers:
  • "What would I say to a hamburger? Oh, boy. I'd shake Mr. Hamburger by the hand and say, 'Pal, I haven't seen you in a long, long time.'"
• but then Pete pulled a gun on the diner cook and demanded Allen to "get that dough out of the register"; the alerted police killed Pete, then arrested Allen as he fled with 5ドル dollars in his pocket
• after a dissolve/transition, the judge's (Berton Churchill) gavel was brought down for sentencing of punishment in prison at hard labor for ten years for a 5ドル robbery - a crime Allen didn't commit (he was an unwilling accomplice in the theft of a lunch-wagon/diner) - the judge's sentencing was harsh:
  • "I see no reason for leniency since the money was found on your person. Futhermore, upon detection, you attempted to escape which would, of necessity, increase the seriousness of your offense"
• the sentence was completed by the clanging sound of a blacksmith's hammer pounding the chain on prisoner Allen's leg
• at 4:20 am, the prisoners (chained together) were awakened and marched into the mess hall; during the meal scene, Allen was disgusted by the tasteless and abominable food, and told by a fellow prisoner that he would have to get used to it:
  • "Grease, fried dough, pig fat and sorghum. And you better get to like it, because you're gonna get the same thing every morning, every year"

• during imprisonment, Allen was forced to participate in hard labor - breaking rocks with a pick; he was knocked down by one of the guards for pausing to wipe the sweat off his brow (without asking permission), as the guard mocked: "Ya got it knocked off!"; fellow convict and lifer Bomber Wells (Edward Ellis) told Allen:
  • "You gotta ask their permission to wipe the sweat off...And in the first place, you got to get their permission to sweat"
• a wall calendar displayed the passage of time -- six months of pages were hammered away (June to November)
• Allen grimaced as his shackles were bent out of shape by powerful black prisoner Sebastian (Everett Brown), who struck unerring blows at his shackles to bend their shape:
  • "If you can bend my shackles just a little, so I can slide them off my foot"
• Allen attempted an exciting and memorable escape after serving seven months of his ten-year sentence; while Allen was taking a break in the bushes, he slipped the shackles off his legs, grabbed clothes from a clothesline and changed out of his uniform, ran through the swamps, and outwitted guards and bloodhounds that were chasing him by breathing through a hollow reed underwater

• in the visually impressive and chilling fade-out ending, the hunted, falsely-accused fugitive James Allen was asked by his fiancee Helen (Helen Vinson) questions about how he lived after he had again escaped:
  • - "Can't you tell me where you're going? Will you write? Do you need any money? But you must, Jim. How do you live?"
    - "I steal"
• he receded into the shadowy darkness as the film concluded