Sally Blane - IMDb. Although this lovely, light brown- haired leading lady would wind up better known as one of Loretta Young's three acting sisters, Sally Blane nevertheless enjoyed a lively albeit modest . The resemblance to her . Link Track Artist(s) Suggested By; 6257: Gotcha! At the 6th Academy Awards ceremony. Join our Oscar insider email list to get the latest news on all things Academy Awards. Hot off the wheels from Howard Hawks' 1932 Scarface, Paul Muni gives a much more focused and compelling performance as the titular fugitive. The story is based on. The classic movie I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (pictured above) is about an innocent man who becomes Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Take the Money and Run sees. I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! Published in 1932, it recounts the dramatic story of the. Burns was the real man behind 1932’s “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.”. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang at the Internet Movie Database; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang at the American Film Institute Catalog; I Am a Fugitive from a. Make a daring break from prison and you could end up a folk hero. Robert Elliott Burns did it the right way. In 1930, Burns slipped loose from the shackles. Overview of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932, directed by Mervyn Le Roy, with Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, at Turner Classic Movies. I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) is a gritty, uncompromising, critical, and combative look at the unjust and barbaric treatment of criminals in. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1. Review, with Paul Muni, Edward Ellis and Glenda Farrell – Pre- Code. Com. Proof That It’s Pre- Code. A Texan assures us that the next man who asks him for an inspection will be “S. O. L.”An innocent man is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. He’s placed on a chain gang and works under dehumanizing conditions that regularly includes men being whipped, beaten and denigrated in a variety of gruesome ways. Having escaped the chain gang, our protagonist, Jim Allen (Muni), hides out in a friend’s boarding house where there’s liquor and a woman named Helen who will keep him company. Jim lives with a woman before they’re married, and they get married because she blackmails him into it. And then she runs around with other men, just to put a cherry on top.“And you can tell her where she can go with little Sammy’s compliments. And more distinguished.”Those are among the first words Jim Allen hears when he returns from World War I. After an eternity spent fighting in the dirty, bloody trenches and with dreams of industry and conquest in his eyes, his childhood sweetheart, Alice (Sally Blaine), has already articulated what everyone in the picture will think of him. He’s a good man, who’s done good deeds. But if he doesn’t look the part, then he’s less than nothing and deserves to be treated as such.“Welcome home from war! Now what have you done for us lately?”Jim is the worst thing a man can be after the First World War– a dreamer. Shaken out of his sleepy routine as a shipping clerk during the war and pushed into engineering, he falls in love with the idea of designing and building things. He tells as much to his fellow returning soldiers (“We’ll be reading about you in the newspapers, I bet!” smiles one of his compatriots, in a sad bit of foreshadowing) and eventually confesses his desires to his mother (Louise Carter) and stuffy brother, Reverend Allen (Hale Hamilton). When the Reverend charges him with being ungrateful for not wanting to return to his pre- War routine, Jim lets out a speech of frustration that must have seemed similar to a lot of the audience about how he’d been given the world and then told to return to his tiny life as if nothing had happened: “No one seems to realize that I’ve changed! That I’m different now! I’ve been through hell! Folks here are concerned with my uniform. I’m out of step with everybody. For a little while, I was hoping to come home and start a new life. And again I find myself under orders in a drab routine. Mechanically, worse than the army. And you, all of you, doing your best to map out my future. To harness me, to lead me around, to do what you think is best for me. It doesn’t occur to you that I’ve grown! And I’ve learned that life is more important than a medal on my chest or a stupid insignificant job.”War changes people. And I don’t just say that some veterans return broken, but it expands people’s horizons as cultures collide. They realize how big the world is and it can give them a new sense of purpose. Unfortunately for Jim, he’s returned to a country awash in young soldiers, many of whom also seeking a change in position. Daring to dream. Jim’s quest across the country for an opportunity to build leaves him penniless and jobless. He crisscrosses from one state to another and ends up in a flophouse in the deep South. One greasy cohabitant offers to take him to a restaurant where they can beg the proprietor for a hamburger. There, Jim’s long quest is almost worth it as he sees that piece of meat hit the grill and licks his lips. An unsympathetic judge sentences him to ten years of hard labor, and he’s sent to join the titular chain gang. Life in the chain gang is brutal. Prisoners are treated worse than animals, a point illustrated plainly as Jim sees the mules given the same amount of respect and dignity as they rise before dawn. He’s smacked for not knowing the routine. He’s punched in the face for wiping his brow in the hot sun. The warden and guards deal entirely in humiliation, feeding them grease, working them for 1. It’s the system built to satisfy a sadist, and the prison staff is bleeding with them.“Well, there’s just two ways to get out of here. Or die out.”Jim is back fighting another war, this one over his dignity. It’s all pretty sensational stuff, and unerringly cruel. John’s fellow inmates include people of all stripes and color stuck in for any kind of crime, from murder to Jim’s case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Let’s take a moment to drink in the lighting in this picture. It’s haunting. John counts down his time left one month in and realizes the sad truth. Among his fellow inmates, Bomber Wells (Ellis) is the most notable, a surrogate father figure for Jim and the closest thing to a friend he’s got. When Jim despairs, Bomber gives him the straight dope. The only catch: “You gotta beat the chains, the bloodhounds, and a bunch of guards that’d just as soon bring you back dead.”Bomber tells him that the only way to get out was to look for a weakness and bide his time until then. Months pass as he plots, and he finally knows the gang’s routines well enough to make his move. Enlisting the help of Sebastian (Everett Brown), the big black man who they keep in jail because of his sheer strength, Jim gets his anklets bent. A few days later, when the timing is right, Jim uses a bathroom break to make his move and dashes into the woods. The escape sequence is excellent at creating tension by never precisely illustrating the distance between just where Jim and his pursuers are. It’s not disorienting enough for the chase to seem like a cheat, but just a little bit of visual trickery to make the audience unsure. Is he only a few feet ahead? Or has he got time to change his clothes? The chase climaxes with Jim using a reed to hide under a pond with the guards mere feet away from him. It’s beautifully modulated. On the run. Despite a massive manhunt and a few close shaves (almost literally), he hooks up with fellow former con and continued crook, Barney (Jenkins), who sets him up for the night. That includes a woman named Linda (Noel Francis), who helps overcome his shyness and shame of being a convict through both empathy and, well, you know. The first thing Jim does on the outside is get himself a new set of clothes. The new outfit seems to make him impervious to suspicion, and, after a train ride north, he finds himself with a job in Chicago, doing exactly what he’d dreamt of. He meets a pretty landlady named Marie who clearly wants him to board with her. Life seems to be going well (even if his new nom de plume is simply his name reversed– Allen James) until Marie discovers his secret and blackmails him into marrying her. While his star rises and he becomes a big time engineer, she spends lavishly and runs around with other men. Things come to a head when Jim falls for a sweet girl named Helen (Vinson). Marie calls the cops, and he’s soon embroiled in drama as the Governor of Illinois resists sending him back to Georgia, especially once Jim’s accounts of life on the chain gang start getting published and making headlines nationally. Back to hell. There’s a meeting between Jim and officials from Georgia and Illinois. Georgia offers Jim a chance to clear the air: he stays in prison for 9. He leaves the room and consults Helen about it as he just wants to get the books cleared with the state, but his lawyers and the other Illinoisan officials are dubious. The movie rogers the audience a bit by cutting back into the room before Jim reenters, showing the Georgian official proselytizing his own beliefs in the chain gang system: “Our chain gangs are beneficial to the convicts. Not only physically, but morally.”Were Jim in the room when he said that, there’s no way he’d have gone back. But he does, and it turns out that the penal system of Georgia is more than happy to lie to him to force him to fulfill the rest of his ten year sentence. They dangle that pardon over him and send him to the worst prison in the state, eager to break him just for defying the system both physically (in the escape) and spiritually (in his personal success). Punishment. Jim is horrified as he realizes he was tricked. His brother, the Reverend Allen, still plays the pragmatic role, believing as he did in the beginning of the movie in the sacredness of institutions and the importance of blind faith in them. He shakes the bars as he yells at his placid brother: “The state’s promise didn’t mean anything. Worse than anyone else’s here! They’re the ones that should be in chains, not we!”Spoilers. He makes it through another year in the system, but it’s perfectly clear that the parole board has no intention of letting him out of their clutches again. Bomber, who’d also been sent to the new prison, helps hatch a plan with Jim to break free. They steal a truck and are pursued by a pack of guards, with Bomber mortally wounded as they wind through the dirt roads. Dead dad figure. It’s definitely no coincidence that Jim’s final act of defiance is blowing up a bridge since bridges are a huge symbol in the film. Seeing one from his office window at the beginning of the film sets Jim out on his journey of self- discovery. On the chain gang, he’s helping to assemble a bridge when he makes his escape. At his peak in Chicago he’s planning and building new ones, and that seems to be the only thing that brings him joy in life. And then, at the end, those sticks of dynamite. Bridges represent progress– a hope for the future, a connection of people and ideas, all while being massive feats of imagination and mathematical planning. Making them the fruits of Jim’s ideals is smart, as it pegs him as a dreamer, someone whose desires are inherently good for the world. When that final explosion hits the screen, it’s not just Jim escaping bondage, but separating himself from all his hopes and dreams. The film’s final shot has been talked about everywhere for practically any reason. It’s unsettling and unnerving.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |