Year of Release: 1937
Director: Fritz Lang
Screenplay: Gene Towne and Charles Graham Baker
Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane
Running Time: 86 minutes
Genre: Crime, drama, romance
Eddie Taylor (Fonda) is a convicted bank robber who is released from prison and tries to go straight with his new wife, Joan (Sidney), secretary to the Public Defender who represented Eddie at his trial. However hard he tries, Eddie comes to feel that he can't catch a break, and finds himself drawn back to his old life with violent and tragic consequences.
Director Fritz Lang had made his reputation in Germany with such classics as Metropolis (1926) and M (1931) before emigrating after the Nazis came to power and eventually ended up in America. His first American film, Fury (1936), attracted praise from critics but was severely tampered with by the studio. This film, loosely based on the exploits of legendary outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, is an early example of what would become known as "film noir", a bleak crime drama, with a doom-laden atmosphere, and desperate characters who, despite their best efforts, are destined for nothing but a bad end. The film also has a still pertinent message about the difficulties of ex-prisoners to find a place in society even after serving their sentence. The film features a powerful, haunted performance from Henry Fonda and a great performance from Sylvia Sidney as the one person who stands by Eddie, even after her world starts to crash down around her. Lang was a consummate visual stylist who honed his craft during the German Expressionist movement, and the film features some startling images, notably a jailbreak sequence, shot with thick rolling smoke and stark, bright shafts of light, with minimal sets. Despite concessions to the censors of the time (Lang was forced to cut fifteen minutes from the film before it could be released) this is still a shocking and troubling film.
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