You could watch "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" a thousand times and still be seized with suspense and anxiety during both of James Allen's escape attempts. The story of a man wronged by injustice, a man who gave his youth for his country, his past to his future, and his mind over to civil engineering. Forced at gunpoint to hold up a diner, he is summarily sentenced to 10 years hard labor- on the chain gang. If you have a soul, this movie will move you. You would have to be heartless not to get angry, whether during the scene where the warden causes the death of a sick inmate, when Allen is betrayed for the first and second times by the prison board, when he's betrayed by his loveless wife. It's a movie that draws out involuntary emotions. Strong emotions.
You might just find yourself yelling at the screen, "It's not fair!" I noticed that Paul Muni, toward the beginning, is to a T the prototype of James Dean and Marlon Brando. He epitomizes the frustration of youth as he tells his mother and brother he doesn't want a factory job anymore. He wants to build. He descends into abysmal poverty. He gets caught and thrown on the chain gang. He slaves away before a black prisoner helps him escape. See how progressive this movie is? The guards are white; the saintly inmates are black. He builds a new life for himself from scratch, on only his wits and skill. He's caught again just as he's found himself a woman he really loves. Allen is a tragic figure- his tragic flaw is only his willingness to believe in the American criminal justice system.
The title says it all. It's not "I WAS a Fugitive..." because he never gets away or is permanently caught. Like Al Roberts in "Detour," he flees forever. Parts of the movie are almost nihilistic, as he gets stuck on the chain gang for guys who were too tough for the chain gang. Prisoners cry, "I don't care whether I live or die! What are you gonna do, kill me?" The chain gang breaks a man. It destroys his spirit until he's just a hollow shell that works until it can no longer and then gives out, dies. All with stark B&W cinematography to match the depletion of humanity, the draining of life from the individual and from the nation.
This, along with "Scarface," is Muni's tour de force. He is eternally sympathetic, and we are eternally in chains with him. Stone walls may not a prison make, but when you're on the chain gang long enough, you clearly become stuck in an imprisoned mind frame. As everyone has commented, the ending is one of the greatest of all film endings. This surprising vision of Allen, more a rat than a man, leaping out of the darkness after his final heroic escape, obviously no longer a hero. In the sparse light we get, we see his emaciated and hardened face. He shakes his head when this woman, whose only thought is for him, asks if he'll need money or if he'll come see her. He backs out of the scene, clearly afraid that somebody's traced him there and will have him back on the chain gang in an instant, always running running running, and then she calls out to him like any normal lover would, "How do you live?" But his answer is not that of a lover. His answer is not that of a man. Nor of an innocent man, nor of a hero. We don't know what he is.
"I steal," he hisses in a ghoulish voice whose echoes linger in our ears long after the scene fades and out and THE END rolls with the Warner Bros. logo. "I steal," and we are forever haunted, cursed with this vision of what an innocent man can become. A fugitive. I shiver every time I think of it.
You might just find yourself yelling at the screen, "It's not fair!" I noticed that Paul Muni, toward the beginning, is to a T the prototype of James Dean and Marlon Brando. He epitomizes the frustration of youth as he tells his mother and brother he doesn't want a factory job anymore. He wants to build. He descends into abysmal poverty. He gets caught and thrown on the chain gang. He slaves away before a black prisoner helps him escape. See how progressive this movie is? The guards are white; the saintly inmates are black. He builds a new life for himself from scratch, on only his wits and skill. He's caught again just as he's found himself a woman he really loves. Allen is a tragic figure- his tragic flaw is only his willingness to believe in the American criminal justice system.
The title says it all. It's not "I WAS a Fugitive..." because he never gets away or is permanently caught. Like Al Roberts in "Detour," he flees forever. Parts of the movie are almost nihilistic, as he gets stuck on the chain gang for guys who were too tough for the chain gang. Prisoners cry, "I don't care whether I live or die! What are you gonna do, kill me?" The chain gang breaks a man. It destroys his spirit until he's just a hollow shell that works until it can no longer and then gives out, dies. All with stark B&W cinematography to match the depletion of humanity, the draining of life from the individual and from the nation.
This, along with "Scarface," is Muni's tour de force. He is eternally sympathetic, and we are eternally in chains with him. Stone walls may not a prison make, but when you're on the chain gang long enough, you clearly become stuck in an imprisoned mind frame. As everyone has commented, the ending is one of the greatest of all film endings. This surprising vision of Allen, more a rat than a man, leaping out of the darkness after his final heroic escape, obviously no longer a hero. In the sparse light we get, we see his emaciated and hardened face. He shakes his head when this woman, whose only thought is for him, asks if he'll need money or if he'll come see her. He backs out of the scene, clearly afraid that somebody's traced him there and will have him back on the chain gang in an instant, always running running running, and then she calls out to him like any normal lover would, "How do you live?" But his answer is not that of a lover. His answer is not that of a man. Nor of an innocent man, nor of a hero. We don't know what he is.
"I steal," he hisses in a ghoulish voice whose echoes linger in our ears long after the scene fades and out and THE END rolls with the Warner Bros. logo. "I steal," and we are forever haunted, cursed with this vision of what an innocent man can become. A fugitive. I shiver every time I think of it.