Monday | March 11, 2002 7:00 pm

Fury

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Spencer Tracy, Sylvia Sidney, Walter Abel.
US, 1936, 35mm, black & white, 94 min.

Often regarded as Lang’s best Hollywood feature, the director’s first American film is a powerful indictment of mob violence. Spencer Tracy portrays a gas-station owner accused of a kidnapping who finds himself in jail and the target of an angry mob. A sustained inquiry into the relations between the mass media and mass violence, the film culminates in a courtroom scene in which filmed evidence of the lynch-mob violence is presented. Fury remains a frightening document as well as a compelling melodrama. Stunning visuals and a taut narrative combine to create an aura of paranoia and excess as each character—even the innocent protagonist—is forced to confront his or her moral self.