Fury

Fury. 1936 MGM/Turner Entertainment.
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Edward Ellis, Walter Brennan
Director: Fritz Lang
Buy Fury at Amazon. Also part of the Controversal Classics box set.

Fritz Lang's first American film saw the director forced by MGM to change details of the original script while filming, namely making the protagonist innocent of the crime he's accused off, and adding on a reconciliation between him and his lover.

Joe Wilson (Tracy) is traveling to meet his fiancée Katherine Grant (Sidney), when he finds himself stopped and arrested on flimsy circumstantial evidence for kidnapping a child. As Joe sits in the pokey, gossip quickly circulates around the small town, which naturally grows more outrageous as it spreads further. Finally, enough of the locals are angered enough to gather at the jail, wanting to bump off Joe themselves. The sheriff (Ellis) refuses to let the public deal with Joe themselves, so they burn down the jail. Joe barely gets away alive, and everyone believes he perished in the blaze.

The local district attorney (Abel) brings the main perpetrators to trial for murder, but no one is willing to identify exactly who did what, and several of the accused have alibis. As things look bleak, the prosecutor reveals newsreel footage shot of twenty-two people caught in the act. On the other side of the courtroom, the defense attorney tries to get his clients off by claiming there's no evidence that Joe was killed. However, an anonymous letter writer had returned a partially melted ring that Joe was wearing, and Katherine notices on the letter that a word is misspelled, the way Joe used to spell it.

Katherine learns that Joe is alive, and conspiring with his brothers to get revenge. She manages to talk him into stopping the charade, and Joe enters the courtroom as the verdicts are being read, setting things right.

A decent courtroom drama, even if the transfer to DVD was less than stellar. Evidentally, a pristine film negative couldn't be located, but considering the film's age, that can be overlooked. Highly recommended movie.