"I could smell myself burning."
Fury was made by director Fritz Lang for MGM Studios in 1936 after he had fled from Nazi Germany. It was his first American film and with its dark subject matter quite unlike anything previously produced by MGM, which usually turned out extravagant dramas and musicals. It is fitting then that the film begins and ends on high notes because in between Lang takes the viewer on a chilling probe in to the disturbing mindset of a lynch mob, the likes of which MGM would never again produce.
Fury starts out simply enough in Chicago with Spencer Tracy’s Joe Wilson seeing off his fiancée, Katherine Grant, played Sylvia Sidney, at the train station. She’s headed south for a better job as a schoolteacher, and as soon as he can afford it, Joe plans to meet up and marry her. A year goes by, and during that time Joe and his two brothers (whom he talks out of working for the mob), work hard and are able to own their own gas station. Joe buys a car and heads south to marry Katherine. Katherine patiently waits for Joe at a diner. But Joe never arrives. He matches the description of a kidnapping suspect and is stopped by a deputy as he arrives in town. Joe is held at the jail on suspicion of kidnapping until the district attorney can examine him. People around town begin to gossip and one thing leads to another and finally a mob is formed with the intent of taking the law into their own hands. The mob is unable to get into Joe’s cell so they set fire to the jailhouse. Katherine arrives in time to see Joe screaming for his life just before some dynamite is thrown into the fire and the jail is blown apart.
But wait there’s more. After somehow surviving his attempted lynching, the once easy-going, likable, everyday guy, Joe Wilson becomes twisted and bitter in his lust for vengeance. He remains in hiding to everyone but his brothers to make sure that the men and women responsible for his supposed murder are convicted and legally executed for their crime.
Working in Hollywood for the first time, Lang had to tone down the expressionist visual style he had become known for in Germany. Lang is forced to blend his German expressionist style with the comparatively mundane Hollywood look. Rather than becoming a hindrance, this heightens the quality and effect of Fury. The sparing use of abstract camera techniques hold more meaning and emotional power working as contrasts to the more traditional Hollywood style acting as a backdrop.
Nothing Lang does is ever superfluous. Seemingly minor character building details become major plot devices later on. Sylvia Sidney is wonderful as Joe's grieving lover and beacon of hope, and Spencer Tracy’s transformation throughout the film is both believable and in a way infuriating. The true power of Fritz Lang’s best films is in the mirror they present to us, and this is one of his finest. The audience is made to feel the way Tracy feels, outraged at the injustice he suffers, thirsting for the same retribution. In mobs people do not think as individuals, they think and function as a group, which is what makes Fury as powerful and as frightening as it is; the audience becomes a bloodthirsty mob bent on retaliation for a crime committed.
