Strange Fruit, Indeed-Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Fury, starring Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, directed by the legendary director Fritz Lang, M-G-M, 1936

Sure plenty of black and white romance, romantic comedy and detective classics came out of the 1930s but given the hard-pressed times, the Great Depression times, there were many social commentary dramas as well ranging from exposing prison conditions to the plight of migrant workers to the plight of abandoned inner city kids. And in the mix M-G-M through the good offices of Joseph Mankiewicz came this very raw rough and ready look at lynch law “justice” in the film under review famed director Fritz Lang’s Fury. This look, the look of small town lynch law “justice” against a convenient stranger, not the look of what was really happening in America, the systematic lynching of mostly black men, the “strange fruit” of the headline as Billie Holiday sang it, but a very evocative look at mob mentality nevertheless.            

The story line is pretty simple. An average 1930s Joe, Joe Wilson, played by a frenetic Spencer Tracy, had cobbled his pennies together after a long struggle in order to go meet and marry his sweetie, an average Katherine, Katherine Grant, played by Sylvia Sidney, living at some distance from him. Along the way Joe was stopped as a “person of interest” by a small town deputy sheriff. The town had been at the time in an uproar over the kidnapping of a child. Joe was made to fit the bill for the heinous crime on the basis of very airy evidence, stuff that wouldn’t hold up in any court outside the town’s jurisdiction. It never got that far, Joe was never meant to get that fair trial in order to sort out the evidence because the town people became subject to a collective psychosis, mob rule. Burned down the jail in their frenzy assuming that their average Joe was killed in the flames.   

Of course the unlawful actions in this case got the D.A. in a frenzy seeking real justice by the book by indicting as many of the perpetrators as possible, eventually rounding up 22 of the suspected felons. Problem: problem in small town or big is that nobody wanted to “snitch” on their fellows. Still the D.A. was ready to lower the boom once he got newsreel footage and could identify the parties to the mayhem.      

Everything looked like curtains for the 22 but then their diligent defense attorney pointed out that the state had no proof that Joe had been killed. Bingo. This is where the film gets a little odd. See Joe had actually survived the fire, was pulling the strings, had decided along with his irate brothers from Chi town in tow to get revenge on the small town mob and would have had the frame all set except, well, except his sweetie Katherine found out he was not dead. She tried, tried and tried really, to get him to go out into the open and prevent another injustice (or at least not have the 22 up on murder charges whatever other crimes they actually did commit). Interesting film if the plotline made the subject under discussion, lynching and mob rule, a little awry.