Rating:
The fact of the matter is I like the average old movie a lot more than I like the average new movie. I’ll take the silent comedies of Chaplin and Keaton over any Judd Apatow picture, Frankenstein and Dracula over The Blair Witch Project and Saw, and Humphrey Bogart over any ten actors you can name today. That’s not to say I don’t still like movies that are coming out today (although above I managed to pick examples of things I don’t like at all, because I’m curmudgeonly), but Hollywood’s Golden Age—and the late sixties / early seventies Renaissance, sure—is where my heart truly lies. And in that heart I have a special affinity for the pre-Code gangster, crime and “message” pictures Warner Bros. put out. There’s just something indefinably powerful about the movies from this period, when moviemakers were first developing skill and artistry, and 1932’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a shining example.

The film tells the story of James Allen (Paul Muni, who you might know from Scarface—the excellent Howard Hawks movie, that is, and not the absurdly overrated Brian De Palma version), a man wrongfully convicted of robbing a diner. He’s sent to a chain gang, where the conditions are intolerably, inhumanly brutal. And, as the title may lead you to suspect, he escapes and becomes a fugitive. We follow him as he leaves his imprisonment far behind and settles into a new, comfortable life where he becomes successful in his work and respected in the Chicago community. But, as one might expect, a man who’s escaped from jail can’t always escape notice.

But the point of this film isn’t to show you the specifics of Allen’s activities after his escape, though it is an interesting story. The real motive of the picture—and the book on which it is based, the autobiography of a prisoner named Robert E. Burns—was to expose the cruelty of the penal system, particularly the chain gangs of the deep south, to the harsh light of day and the critical gaze of the public. In this respect, it’s a socially conscious “message” movie, and so it comes with a little bit of speechifying, but no more than its fair share. For the most part it manages to put its message across within the context of the story without resulting to appeals directly to the audience. It certainly got the message heard; the movie and Burns’ book are generally cited as major contributing factors to a wave of penal reform.

Even apart from the message, we’re given a story compelling enough to keep us watching. The cast and the director (Mervyn LeRoy) know just what to do with every scene—as did just about everybody working in pictures in those days, a period in which the level of competence and professionalism from all departments involved in making a movie was higher than it has ever been since. Perhaps best of all, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang doesn’t pull its punches and lessen its impact by wrapping everything up in a neat little package. In those days before the Breen Office, such business wasn’t necessary in every film regardless of whether it was earned, and so the audience gets an ambiguous but fairly bleak ending to keep them thinking about what the picture had to say long after the projector stops.

So come on, you young kids with your cell phones and your baggy pants and your inline skates. Drop your “black-and-white movies are dumb, cinema begins with Star Wars” attitude and give a movie like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang a try. You won’t regret it, I promise.

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• The Last House on the Left (Original)
• Scrooged
• The Worst News Ever
• Yankee Doodle Dandy
• The True Nature of a Familiar Song