elab49
Posts: 51617
Joined: 1/10/2005
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No. 24
The Sound of Fury (1950)
Director: Cy Endfield
Writers: Joe Pagano (from his own novel) and Endfield
Spoiler Free Summary: Down on his luck working man hooks up with a small-time crook. When a kidnap goes wrong, the whipped up mob beckons.
"whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap"
Although this film might not be well-known I think many readers will better recall the first version of the story that it tells.
In November 1933 a lynch mob numbering thousands stormed a jail and hanged 2 men suspected of the kidnap and murder of a local man. By the time of the riot the Governor had all but encouraged the mob, the media were inciting them and, just before they struck, the body of the kidnapped man was found. The case retains some notoriety even now not just because of the horrific circumstances but because it also directly influenced 2 films. The first, Fritz Lang's stunning 1936 proto-noir Fury. The second – as also referenced in the title, was this 1950 film from Cy Endfield – The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me, changed after it flopped, but in no way as evocative of the final minutes of the film as the original title was).
 
This is another noir that spits on the ideal of the American dream. Endfield's American home isn't the glowing American dream domesticity of Pitfall or Big Heat or countless other films of the period. Poverty, illness. Ex-GIs with no note of honour in their activity overseas. The American dream isn't working – what did they fight for? The quiet desperation of poverty forms the core of this film, the reasons which drive Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy) to throw in his lot with Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges) after a fateful meeting in a local bowling rink as Tyler is trying to find work to support his current family, with one more on the way. Slocum is slick – takes Tyler back to his room and tempts him with his snazzy clothes and tales of easy money. But money isn't quite so easy – Slocum's business is quick and dirty hold-ups. But Tyler has no choice – there is nothing else out there. Alcohol helps him through it, but he's falling all the same, deeper into self-loathing. And then they step-up to an ill-thought out kidnap that doesn't quite work out as Slocum loses it – his resentment at Miller's nice clothes and New York life pushes him to throw what plan he had out the window. Ignoring Tyler's initial attempt to stop him he loses control at a helpless, bound man. And once Tyler's tainted he strays (a sad little portrait of a lonely and needy woman by Katherine Locke), he wants to be punished and doesn't want to be home with the family anymore. Admitting the crime he is tracked down and eventually Slocum too – none of this really a spoiler, because we already know the story. And then we get to the jail.
 
Fury is a fantastic film, but in the early days of the Hays Code a lot of punches were pulled. There was still some fabulous stuff in the court, contrasting the film taken of the feral crowd, with them sitting prim and proper in the court, as well as Tracy's vicious performance as the man who wants them to pay. But Endfield doesn't have those kinds of limits anymore. There are, for the most part, better films below this in my list, of that I have no doubt. But then we get to the last half hour or so. We see where the first scene comes in – back to Brother Barnes the evangelist preaching to the blind (the optometrist pops out – his message is being trampled on the title card), the message essentially that people in glass houses, etc etc. And the crowds start to form.
 
The riot scenes and the attack on the jail are astonishing pieces of film-making that drive the adrenaline of the viewer through the roof – this is the man who gave us the siege at Rourke's Drift, sure enough. The mass crowd mill outside the jail, hundreds of people who give a damn good impression of a genuine angry mob. Inside, those responsible for the prisoners know they'll eventually have to give up without any support, and the best the chief can do is tell his men to remember faces. But the cells themselves? Tyler, resigned. He wants this; he feels it is his due. But Bridges? This is Lloyd Bridge's greatest performance – when his son gets the Oscar that is his due next month there will be no question his talent was genetic. Livid with his former partner for giving him up, he's already losing it, going quite mad in the cell, yelling and provoking and bouncing off the walls – when the mob break in he calls them all out, fighting tooth and nail, with rather less success than Oh Dae-Su. We don't see the final lynching. We don't need to.
 
"if frightened people are the measure of newspaper sales...."
I feel like I should add a recommendation to iplayer week 1 of Newswipe with this review. Half the show was spent on the decisions of the media to exaggerate – road rage rates, swine flu rates, etc etc. Exactly what Gil Stanton does in this film for the hell of it and to sell papers and later we see the blatantly inflammatory front page that helps drive the crowd, fear mongering that the criminals will escape "justice" with ease.
Like many social noirs there is a tendency to lecture – here a valid attack on the yellow press but the foreign shrink's concern for the mind of a man distressed by social ills to explain away a crime is somewhat reminiscent of my earlier entry The Sniper, with added European accent to enhance credibility "violence is a disease caused by moral and social breakdown".
"if a man becomes a criminal sometimes it is his environment that is defective"
The blatant socialist class politics of the film following on from the assumed attack on McCarthy in The Underworld Story led to Endfield's blacklisting in the US and, like many, he headed to the UK to continue to make films, including the aforementioned 2. But without that, these 2 films that brought him to wider attention and acclaim (although not commercial – Sound of Fury certainly tanked) could have led to a far more noteworthy career than that he ended up with. There is a tangible anger and raw power to these 2 Americans films, lacking in the more tepid approach to social drama from the likes of Kazan.
So Cy Endfield didn't have the greatest of careers but he did make 2 other films that I love – obviously Zulu, a great favourite on the boards, and also the brilliant Hell Drivers starring Stanley Baker, one of my favourite actors (and the answer to the clue above – co-stars included William Hartnell, Patrick McGoohan, David McCallum and Gordon Jackson. Wilfred Lawson was Doolittle in Pygmalion). And he does a fantastic job here, particularly with that brutal attack on the jail by the lynch mob but also some lovely touches through the film, e.g., as the body is pushed down the hill of stones to the beach, as we follow that down and stay to watch the stones continuing to move.
 
Endfield and cinematographer Roe (and I'd challenge anyone to note this on first viewing!) give us lingering forewarnings of what's to come. As they take Miller to the beach Howard goes back to the car and the camera fades from the rope in the shape of a noose back into the action. Returning home at the tipping point to the second half of the film he stands outside his front gate, a pole reaching up behind him, angled to look for all the world like a gallows at his back.
 
Rarely has the frightening power of the mob been as well represented on film as in Sound of Fury. With 2 excellent lead performances, it is a pity that this film is still so hard to find, but it is well worth looking out.
Trivia: One of the reasons for the original incidents notoriety is the allegation that Jackie Coogan, a college friend of the victim, was one of the hanging squad in the lynch mob.
< Message edited by elab49 -- 29/3/2011 10:19:24 PM >
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