In 1933, Fritz Lang was at the height of his cinematic powers following his film ‘Metropolis’, his latest film ‘Testament of Dr Mabuse’, although banned by the new regime had interested Hitler’s Propaganda minister and master of evil Joseph Goebbels offered Lang a chance to make films for UFA under Nazi guidance. Lang decided fuck that, divorced his frequent collaborator and wife, Thea Von Harbou (who had voiced her allegiance with the Nazi party but ended up marrying an Indian man) and fled to Paris a few months later.
Lang soon arrived in Hollywood where he was offered by MGM a chance to direct the film ‘Fury’ about an innocent man almost burned alive in a jail cell by an angry mob of men and women. Norman Krasna took the real life kidnapping and murder of a young man, Brooke Hart and turned it into a book, Mob Rule. Krasna originally pitched it Joseph Mankiewicz & Samuel Marx, who then gave it to Bartlett Cormack to adapt, with input from Lang. Fritz initially pitched a take where the protagonist was a black man but this being the 1930’s, it was decided that was a horrific idea and never to be discussed again. Spencer Tracy was cast as the protagonist Joe Wilson, who can be seen walking his girlfriend Katherine (Sylvia Sydney) to the train in the film’s opening, they want to get married and start a family but Joe wants to make sure they’re solid financially before getting hitched, he sees her off at the station, picks up a stray dog whom he christens Rainbow, then goes back to his apartment where his brothers Charlie (Frank Albertson) and Tom (George Walcott) stumble into the apartment after a night on the town with the youngest being drunk. Joe chastises his brothers about the company they keep.
A year later, Joe is running a gas station with his brothers and life is pretty swell, he has a car and he set’s off to meet his sweetheart in a neighbouring town, along the way, he’s stopped by a Deputy “Bugs” Meyers (Walter Brennan) at gunpoint and brought in for questioning by a local Sheriff (Edward Ellis), Joe, initially thrown off guard demands to know why he’s being interrogated, he’s informed there’s been a kidnapping of a young girl, he fit’s the description for one of the suspects, also peanuts were found at the scene of the crime and a five dollar note on Joe’s person also throws more suspicion on Joe, he’s held in Jail while the matter is investigated further. He’s joined by Rainbow.
While Joe sits in Jail, Meyer is coaxed into giving up information that a suspect in the kidnapping has been found, Milton Jackson (George Chandler) demands justice from the Sheriff but he’s refused because the Sheriff can see past his bullshit. The townspeople build themselves into a collective fervor (started naturally by the local gossipy women), Milton leads an angry mob to the steps of the jailhouse where they find the Sheriff waiting for them, he attempts to calm them down and make them see reason but they’re so keyed up all it takes is a spark and the mob go wild, the National Guard the Sheriff called for are held back because a scheming politician doesn’t like the optics. While all this is going on, Katherine waits at a nearby diner until she hears a news report and rushes to his rescue (Joe didn’t want to involve her or his brothers). The mob manage to get inside the police station but they can’t seem to get inside the jail so they opt for plan B, they put a load of stuff up against the jail wall and light a match, Katherine arrives just in time to see Joe behind a wall of flames before fainting.
After the cloud of anger has passed among the townsfolk, they emerge from the mist with a somewhat arrogant attitude that what occurred, occurred and they should just move past it. Joe has no such feelings, he’s royally pissed after escaping getting burned alive and Rainbow getting killed. Joe arrives to greet his brothers with a decidedly darker outlook on humanity than the one he began the film with, it didn’t help that he went to a cinema to watch a newsreel about the incident and all he heard were the patrons laughing at his demise. Joe has a plan, though, he’ll pretend to be dead and he’ll pin his murder on the mob that tried to kill him, conceptually, it’s kind of brilliant, there’s only one snag, there’s no body. Joe has a plan for that, he placed his ring at the scene of the crime.
The DA is initially sceptical but agrees to take on the case and goes about the business of prosecuting the 22 men and women who became an angry mob. The DA’s final masterstroke is to show images of those men and women in the throws of a violent frenzy, taken by various photographers. It’s a damning indictment.
Lang reportedly hated the ending to this film, which ended on an optimistic note for Joe Wilson but that doesn’t diminish the film’s journey into the darker parts of the human soul, especially where Joe is concerned, it’s interesting that this film shows the townsfolk as yokels mainly (there’s even a scene of the gossipy women being intercut with clucking chickens), they seemingly have the luxury of pretending what happened was an anomaly whereas Joe is dealing with a far darker battle, it’s not enough to hate what was done to him, he has to go further, even after his brothers and Katherine become appalled at what he’s become, he becomes even more entrenched in his single mindedness. During the trial one of the women faints at the image of what she had become, it’s unclear whether they would fully reconcile themselves with the events of that night but if they hadn’t been exposed to the images in the courtroom they would’ve most likely brushed it under the carpet, those images will forever tarnish the image they had of themselves being upstanding decent citizens, the damage had been done, to both Joe and the angry mob.
cinematic horizons 