film

Released in 1936, Fury is the great Austrian expressionist director Fritz Lang's first American film after fleeing Nazi Germany, and in it he brought a resounding critique of power and mass psychology to Hollywood. Spencer Tracy stars as Joe Wilson, an ordinary man whose life is shattered when he is wrongly accused of kidnapping. When a mob storms the jail he's being held in and sets it on fire, Joe is presumed dead, but survives and secretly plots revenge against those responsible. What begins as a courtroom drama gradually becomes a complex study of the morality of vengeance and justice and the corrupting influence of hatred.

Lang transforms a seemingly straightforward story into a chilling study of collective violence, exposing how fear and rumour can turn respectable citizens into a murderous mob. The film's innovative use of newsreel footage and expressionistic lighting heightens its tension, while Tracy delivers one of his finest early performances.