I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' is a powerful dramatic adventure film which takes a critical look at the harsh penal practices common in the prison system of the southern states of America, particularly Georgia, just after WW1. It was made in 1932, directed by Mervyn Leroy and stars Paul Muni, one of Warner Brothers' leading actors of the 1930's.

The movie received three Academy Award nominations without winning any: Best Picture, Best Actor for Paul Muni, and Best Sound, Recording for Nathan Levinson (sound director). In 1991, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Search Amazon for 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang'

Based on an autobiographical collection of writings by Robert E. Burns, who himself escaped from a chain gang and became a successful magazine editor, 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' vividly depicts an innocent man, James Allen (Paul Muni), brutalised and criminalised after being sentenced to ten years' hard labor in the Deep South. Having broken out once to make a decent new life, he is betrayed, escapes again, but has to spend his life as a broken fugitive.

The movie is arguably the finest of the series of hard-hitting social-protest dramas Warner Brothers specialized in during the 1930's and the reputation of socially conscious director Mervyn LeRoy, who also directed 'Little Caesar' and the lynching movie 'They Won't Forget', is identified perhaps more with this film than with any other. He certainly does not hold back in his very personal expression of social outrage. The film is devoid of the melodrama seen in many films of this era, and instead tells its story in very realistic terms. Rock splitting, sadistic guards, escapes including the seminal pursuit by baying bloodhounds through a swamp), solitary confinement - the vocabulary of the behind-bars genre was laid down here.

Paul Muni gives a moving and memorable performance as James Allen, (in a neat reversal from his thuggish role as Scarface the same year), capturing all of the confusion and pain of his inexplicable situation. The audience is able to feel the dark horror into which he is forced to descend, and shares with him the sense of hopelessness growing with each passing day. There is also a fine supporting cast including Helen Vinson, Noel Francis, Allen Jenkins and Berton Churchill.

The movie is worth seeing just to appreciate how often it has been referenced or copied by other films such as 'Blackmail' in 1939 with Edward G. Robinson, 'The Defiant Ones' in 1958 with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier, and most recently in the Coens' 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

The movie is inevitably dated to modern eyes but still powerfully disturbing down to the famously haunting and heartbreaking last line. As Muni's fugitive Jim slips away into the night, his lover plaintively calls out "How do you live?" From the darkness comes the whisper, "I steal." Tragically, he has come to realise that he has to be a criminal in order to survive.

'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' did have an impact on the real world of prison reform. Lawmakers had to re-think the bleak treatment meted out to chain gang inmates as well as considering if such punishment was justified. Warner Bros. were sued by the warden portrayed in the film, J. Harold Hardy, for "vicious, untrue and false attacks" and the original autobiographer, Robert Elliot Burns, who had been re-arrested since the film was released, was not extradited to Georgia because of the publicity. He and a number of other chain gang prisoners nationwide in the United States were able to appeal and were released.