fury (1936)

an old favourite, and a definitive product of the hollywood system that hollywood didnt want viewers to see, fritz lang's first american film fury is as watchable as ever. the story of a man whom is wrongly arrested and subsequently believed to be unlawfully killed by the means of mob protest apparently came in reaction to the claim that over 6,000 people had been victims of lynch mobs in the 49 proceeding years to the films release. such tumulous subject matter resulted in the unoffical ''banning'' of the film by the studio, before it reached home video at the end of the 1990's.

spencer tracy leads the cast as the dead man who rises from the grave in order to bring justice upon his killers, and as such the film is very much his. as was of the time the supporting roles lean from the side of comedic sidekick to lovelorn damsel, but its the central performance that one will remember.

fury is very much a departure for the type of cinema being output at the time of its production, at least within the american studio system, and as a result was one of the films that laid the tracks for film noir to cross. obviously lang's association with german expressionism lent him a level of authority that was perhaps lacking in the other key members of the foundations of fim noir as an american movement, and this is distinct in his early american work (pre-the big heat for arguments sake). in fact, if you look at fury followed by its immediate successor you only live twice you can see the similiarites towards film noir grow greater. as lang became a more relaxed american filmmaker his style laxed back to how he was comfortable working, as opposed to working to the methods outlined by the studios. inevitability dictates that lang's artistic capability would eventually dispose of the strict guides within which he would be expected to work, its fascinating to see it in action over a 15 year period. when you take into account the commercial failure of citizen kane, and the all round failure of the night of the hunter, films which were both heavily indebted to lang's earlier work in terms of style, it makes it all the more impressive that lang was able to somehow come through with bringing his style to the fore, in light of such financial duress. alas, if it werent for the failure of the two films named above i wonder if we would have experienced what we know as 'film noir' earlier.