Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel

Synopsis:
A man being held on a murder charge becomes the target of a paranoid town, which organizes a lynch mob to take the law into their own hands.

Impressions:
This is Fritz Lang's first American movie and there are some parallels you can draw between it and M with the climate of paranoia and such. The real lynchpin is Spencer Tracy's performance. It was still fairly early in his career when this was made, but he's every bit the first-rate actor then as he would prove to be later. There's a transformation of the character halfway into the movie and it's really something special. I also want to note Walter Abel's performance as the district attorney. He really carries the courtroom sequence. The lynch mob at the crux of the story is really hard to watch. I can't speak for other people, but scenes of mob violence really strike a chord with me. It's powerful filmmaking. Even so, the story feels watered down a bit and that's because there was a fair bit of executive meddling. Fortunately, with a director like Lang and a leading man like Spencer Tracy, even with executive meddling, you can get a fine movie and that's what this is. Give it a watch.

Rating:
Watch It