I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

Paul Muni stars in this indictment of America's prison system as James Allen, a soldier returning home after WW1. Encourage by the opportunities afforded to him during his military service, James wants to go into construction and not back into his factory job. He finds it hard to get work though, and joins America's great post-war breadline. Soon he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, convicted as an accomplice on a murder-robbery, and incarcerated as part of a chain gang - a brutalising experience that prompts him to escape. Against the odds he rejoins society as a civil engineer but his happiness is shortlived - he's blackmailed into marriage by a golddigging opportunist, and the situation gets so bad that his only escape is to face a return to the chain gang.



I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang was so effective back in 1932 that it prompted widespread reform of the American prison system in the South. This seems to be one of the film's primary aims - to educate the public and condemn the barbaric 'medieval torture' practiced by the chain gangs. I realise that it's based on a true story, but if the point of this film is to promote a reformation of the system then shouldn't Muni's character have been guilty? Either it wants to send a message that Muni is an innocent man given an unfair treatment, or that the system is unfair to everyone. To say both is a bit of a mixed message, and the real-life convict who inspired the film (Robert Burns) was certainly guilty of at least robbery.



That aside, there's some other interesting stuff going on in this film. Steve is essentially punished for thinking outside of the box and not conforming with an increasingly production line-based culture. He wants to make a meaningful contribution to society but his family and community try to browbeat him into giving up this dream. The rest of society is just as closed off, and he soon walks the path of a vagabond, and after that he's thrown into an awful Southern prison that sees him shackled with heavy irons and set to work in the sun for unreasonable stretches of time.



When he finally does get out to work in his dream job he becomes a well-respected member of the community, but the spectre of the prison system rises up to consume him once more - begging the question, if this guy has a lot to offer his country then what good does it do to imprison him? What's the general point of imprisonment? To reform? Or to punish? The powers that be in this film claim that the prison institution discourages crime and builds character - and yet in this case it destroys an upstanding citizen just to make a point.



Some of the imagery and plot beats are a bit heavy-handed but it all works towards creating an effective piece of liberal propaganda. The banging of a judge's gavel turns into a hammer fixing chains to Muni's leg. Steve tries to hock his war medal in an act of desperation but is defeated by the image of a cabinet full of similar medals in the pawn shop. And let's not forget that rabble-rousing cornerstone of the prison film genre: the institution that doesn't play fair. You'll get so fed up with Steve's situation that the supremely ironic ending (where he blows up a bridge to escape after a life of aspiring to build such structures) becomes a vindicating cartharsis. The system fails Steve, so in the end it's society that suffers directly. It's hard to see a film like this getting made under the Hays Code (which came into effect a year after this film was released) and it still stands some 80 years later as a powerful and controversial classic.



DIRECTOR: Mervyn LeRoy

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes, based on the autobiography of Robert Elliott Burns.

KEY ACTORS: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Wilson, Allen Jenkins, Preston Foster, Edward Ellis



RELATED TEXTS:

- I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, the autobiography of real-life WW1 veteran Robert Elliott Burns.

- Also adapted as the telemovie The Man Who Broke 1000 Chains, starring Val Kilmer.

- Brubaker and Scum stand as later examples that criticise western institutions of incarceration.

- More prison films: The Shawshank Redemption, The Big House, The Birdman of Alcatraz, Escape From Alcatraz, A Man Escaped, Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones.



AWARDS

Academy Awards - nominated Best Film, Best Actor (Paul Muni) and Best Sound.