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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) |
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| Paul Muni plays returning doughboy and future convict James Allen. |
The first thing you'll notice about I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is how tight it is. They just don't make movies like this anymore. Tight pacing, crisp dialogue, no wasted movement. IAFFGC covers over 10 years of the protagonist's life, and manages to do it in 92 minutes. There is no way this plot could be filmed nowadays in less than three hours. And indeed, the clipped tone of the movie is problematic in a couple of areas where underdeveloped characters play a large, though somewhat puzzling, role in driving the plot forward. Still, what the narrow focus does provide is a clear emphasis on the main character, an unforgettable performance by Paul Muni as James Allen an everyman caught up in a merciless justice system. Muni often get criticized for his broad acting style, but to my eyes it is no worse than that of the still-revered "method" actors of the 1950s. Muni is able to convey effectively the bewilderment and revulsion of an generally innocent man trapped in a heartless justice system.
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| Allen is welcomed home by his mom, girlfriend, and brother. |
Allen returns from World War I as a combat veteran and trained engineer. His homecoming, however, is a let down. After some brief congratulations over his wartime service, he learns that the big reward awaiting him is the opportunity to return to his old job as a shipping clerk, albeit now with a window above his desk. This is not a contemporary dilemma, but it is interesting to recall how just a few generations ago social mobility was much scarcer. After World War II, returning soldiers were able to take advantage of the GI Bill and general post-war prosperity, but the United States was much less integrated economically in the 1920s, leaving open the possibility that a young man like Allen might be passed over by the economic boom of the 1920s. That said, I think that Allen's plight, including his turn as essentially a hobo roaming the rails is more a reflection of the economy in 1932 when the movie was made than in the early 1920s when it was set. But then again, this movie is based on a true story.
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| Allen, looking forlorn, dreams of building bridges. |
Anyway, Allen initially returns to his clerk position, but soon grows restless especially since he can see a bridge being built from his office window. The window actually seems to taunt him with reminders of his seemingly unattainable ambitions. His dreams of being an engineer thwarted at home, he takes to the road looking for work. Unfortunately, his timing is off. Every job he finds is temporary, and soon instead of bouncing from job to job, he is unemployed and penniless. He tries to sell his war medal at a pawn shop, but finds that hundreds of other veterans have beaten him to the punch. Too proud to return home, he becomes a vagrant moving from flop-house to flop-house while chasing rumors of employment. In one flop house he meets up with another vagrant -- Pete (Preston Foster) -- who suggests going to a local diner to beg for food. Allen agrees reluctantly, and indeed the diner's owner grudgingly begins to fry up a couple of burgers for the beggars. But Pete has other plans. He pulls a gun and tries to stick up the place, forcing Allen to go along at gun point. The robbery is interrupted by a cop, who guns down the would-be robber and arrests a fleeing Allen as a accomplice.
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| Allen as unwilling accomplice and captured crook. |
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Allen gets convicted and sentenced rapidly. As is typical in movies, Southern justice moves quickly, especially when a Yankee is the accused (I am sure that anyone reading this review can immediately think of at least a half-dozen recent movies that revisit this theme). Allen gets sentenced to a chain gang, which is portrayed as a slightly harsher version of the one Cool Hand Luke ends up on. Though the prisoners are not treated much worse, they are poorly fed ("Grease, fried dough, pig fat, and sorghum") and housed, and for many prisoners the chain gang is a death sentence. I actually have no idea what the death rates were like on chain gangs at the time. Presumably, it was not a pleasant experience, but by the same token I am not sure that chain gangs were quite that lethal. I'm not sure that they weren't either, but I just don't know. And at the risk of sounding like Homer Simpson, I do have to say that the meal described above actually could be pretty tasty.
Anyway, Allen soon decides that the only way to survive is to escape. He approaches an African-American convict, Sebastian (played by Everett Brown) -- referred to in the movie at one point, jarringly, as a "big buck" -- who wields his sledgehammer with uncanny precision. Allen bravely braces his ankle against a train rail and allows Sebastian to smash his ankle restraints with the sledgehammer. In the movie, this serves to bend the metal, allowing Allen to slip off the restraints. In real life, I suspect this sort of stunt would result in permanent hobbling instead... at least if attempted as shown in the movie.
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| Yummy! Pig fat. |
Anyway, he escapes. There are actually several great sequences during the escape: a high energy chase through the woods with bloodhounds in close pursuit, and a couple of suspenseful close calls as Allen gets a shave while seated next to a cop, and later escaping from a posse onto a train. Ultimately he makes his way up north with the help of a former chain gang buddy (Barney played by Allen Jenkins) and a kind hearted good time girl (Linda played by Noel Francis) whose charms he manages to resist -- oddly considering he's a single man who has just done a tour in stir and considering she's giving it away free thanks to Barney, but whatever. Once in Chicago he gets a job on a construction site and takes a room in a boarding house run by Marie Woods (Glenda Farrell) -- Marie seems a little lonely and actually offers Allen a special rate to entice him to stay. Now, Paul Muni was a good enough looking guy, but hardly so special that hookers and landladies would cut him special deals. Marie apparently pegs him as an ambitious young man on his way to the top but there is nothing in the movie to explain how she comes to this conclusion so quickly.
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| Allen meets up temporarily with Barney and Linda, but ends up ensnared by a boozing Marie. |
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James Allen, by the way, has now changed his name to Allen James. Not very clever... although I suspect it would still manage to fool the INS today. With his new name and a roof over his head, he quickly moves up until soon he's a foreman and then a construction executive. His only problem is that Marie is a manipulative hussy... but then again, what woman isn't? Ha ha. Just kidding. She learns he is an escaped con (by reading his mail), and uses that knowledge to blackmail him into taking her as his wife and resident leech. She spends his money like water and is an unfaithful shrew to boot... but at least she puts out... I think. Allen is pretty miserable, but given his dicey background, he is not particularly inclined to resist. At least, he isn't until he meets Helen (Helen Vinson) at a dinner party. Neither he nor Helen are much interested in schmoozing with the swells, on that slender basis a romance blooms. They go for a drive. He asks her if she has to go home right away. Charmingly, she replies, "There are no musts in my life. I'm free, white, and 21."
Soon they are in love, but standing between them and happiness are Marie's greed and Allen's status as an escaped con. Allen tries to dump Marie, and she, naturally, rats him out. Since he is a successful man about town, Allen tries to use his political connections to avoid serving out his sentence. This creates something of a federal controversy, and ultimately Allen agrees to a deal. He'll return to the chain gang in return for a promise of a quick pardon.
I'm sure you can guess what happens. Allen returns, but the governor, angered by various newspaper statements about harsh Southern justice decides to make an example of Allen. He refuses to grant the pardon. Allen is devastated. But instead of giving up, he simply escapes again. This time by stealing a truck and dynamiting a bridge. However, he knows that there is now no chance for respectability. He lives in the shadows, only appearing once to let Helen know that he is still alive. She wants him to go public but he refuses, knowing that his enemies will pursue him to the ends of the earth.
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| With Helen in happier times. Don't Marie and Helen in particular look alike? |
"How do you live?" She asks him, concerned.
"I steal," he replies, retreating into the darkness, his footsteps the last sounds we hear.
The ending is stark and brilliant. Supposedly, the composition was accidental. The lights on the set were turned out prematurely, but seeing the results the studio decided to keep the error in the final film.
The theme of the movie is pretty obvious I think. James Allen just wants to succeed, but the economy and social convention conspire to hold him down. When he tries to escape his lack of upward mobility, he is forced into poverty and essentially ends up at the mercy of a merciless justice system. Once he escapes, he temporarily sees daylight, and of course, his hard work leads to rapid success. In the end, however, a manipulative girlfriend and vain politicians destroy his dreams and finally force him to embrace a life of crime. In short, the system not fails at rehabilitation, it makes criminals out of ordinary citizens. This sort of reformist theater was, in many ways, the dominant form of serious mainstream prison narrative from the 1930s to the late 1960s, when more complex characters began to appear. Indeed, we see almost an identical message in The Big House (1930). The movie, however, relies on an implausible trigger to trap Allen in the system. Allen is truly simply at the wrong place at the wrong time with the diner hold up. I think the whole story would be more plausible if Allen's initial troubles came from an youthful error in judgment rather than simple bad luck. Indeed, isn't what makes Red in Shawshank such a poignant character? Here, Allen's luck is just so rotten that even if he had avoided his run-in with the courts, he'd have probably been hit by a train.
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| Ironically, the man who wanted to build bridges escapes from prison by blowing one up before becoming the haunted fugitive from the final scene: "I steal!" |
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The movie makes another couple of odd choices. The women in Allen's life could pass for sisters. All medium height, with wavy, blond hair. Artifact of central casting? Producer's fetish? Or is there some message in it? Also, the tightness of the pacing means that we never quite understand what makes Marie tick. If she's such a money-grubber, why would she rent to the down-and-out Allen in the beginning? Also, what do we make of Allen's brother Clint, the Reverend? He seems much older than Allen, and he seems to have surprisingly little understanding of what makes his brother tick. He's presumably supposed to be emblematic of the establishment that allows the justice system to function without outside scrutiny.
As I mentioned earlier, this movie is based on a true story, although interestingly in real life the James Allen character did find steady work and receive a pardon after the second escape. Indeed, the story was based on a book by Robert Elliott Burns, and Burns was actually a consultant on the movie. Nowadays, Hollywood routinely fictionalizes stories to add a happy ending. Back in 1932, they did the opposite.
This is a classic prison movie. It is well-acted and beautifully paced. The implicit arguments for prison reform are reflexive and understated, and the movie plays like a tragic character study rather than a "message movie." It is well worth a look.
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