I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) - Systemic injustice bared in LeRoy's crackerjack crime drama

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A dangerous holdup in what appears a criminal underworld environment is presented on this murky poster for Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

After having served military duty in WWI, James Allen returns to civilian status but does not want factory work; he wants to build something new up as an engineer! But following an unfortunate arrest, he is sentenced to 10 years in a chain gang. - He manages to escape! - But his past finds him ...

 

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is written by Howard J. Green (The Millionaire (1957, TV-series)) and Brown Holmes (Castle on the Hudson (1940)), with Sheridan Gibney (The Locket (1946)) contributing uncredited work, adapting the autobiographical I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! (1932) by Robert Elliott Burns, and directed by great Californian filmmaker Mervyn LeRoy (No Place to Go (1927)).

Thoroughly suspenseful, fast-paced, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang relies on a thrilling story for its success. The woman, who forces a lucrative marriage through by blackmailing our protagonist, is one of the film's exciting, credibly played (by Glenda Farrell (Bonanza (1964, TV-series))), memorable characters. All of it rings 100 % true. 

SPOILER A very exciting climax ends up in a shockingly tragic, stirring ending: 'The system can crush a good man' is the icy lesson here. Paul Muni (Hudson's Bay (1940)) is beautiful and outstanding as the hero in this electrical, indignant film.

 

Related post:

 

Mervyn LeRoy: The Green Berets (1968) - Wayne's gung ho pretty picture of the Vietnam War clashes with reality (co-director)

 

Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 228k $

Box office: 1.599 mil. $

= Huge hit (returned 7.01 times the cost)

[I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang premiered 9 November (Washington D.C.) and runs 93 minutes. LeRoy was paid 13.2k $ for his direction of the film. Shooting took place from July - September 1932 in California, including in Los Angeles, with stock footage of Chicago, Illinois also used. The film grossed 650k $ in North America, 40.7 % of the total gross. It was nominated for 3 Oscars, winning none: It lost Best Actor (Muni) to Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII, Picture to Cavalcade and Sound to A Farewell to Arms. The film also won 2 National Board of Review awards. It was instrumental in the appeal and release of Burns and "several other chain gang prisoners nationwide in the U.S." in 1933. LeRoy returned with Hard to Handle (1933). Muni returned in The World Changes (1933). I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is fresh at 96 % with an 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang?

Grand Hotel (1932) - Loose star vehicle with some charm and two magnificent dames

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The stars align in this splashy poster for Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel

At Berlin's Grand Hotel several exciting people reside; the presumptuous diva dancer, the free stenographer, the baron, who has lost everything and steals from everybody; the stupid factory owner, and the dying worker, Kringelein.

Grand Hotel is written by William Absalom Drake (Strange Justice (1932)), adapting his own same-titled 1930 play, which in turn was based on Vicki Baum's (Die Welt ohne Sünde (1923)) novel Menschen im Hotel (1929). It is directed by Edmund Goulding (Sun-Up (1925)).

Written as an ensemble star vehicle, and a spearhead for this particular discipline in films, Grand Hotel is without a larger, unifying plot. It can seem to be splashing a bit in different directions. There is for instance rather a lot of talk about a merger, which seems highly unimportant for the stories. There is a good amount of drama tied to death, but the perishing accountant character Kringelein is somehow too thinly sketched as a character; has the man no family, friends, and no apparent history?

Grand Hotel still retains a good deal of irrefutable charm as the major production it was. It especially lives on due to the fascinating, vivid portraits drawn by its two big female stars as two very opposite-directed characters: Greta Garbo (Eros (1926)) as the tempestuous diva, and Joan Crawford (Today We Live (1933)) as the romantic 'dove' stenographer.

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 750k $

Box office: 2.5 mil. $ 

= Box office success (returned 3.33 times its cost)

[Grand Hotel premiered 12 April (New York) and runs 112 minutes. Producer Irving Thalberg had bought the rights to the novel for 13k $, and contracted Drake again after success on the stage for a film version. Shooting took place in MGM's Culver City studio in California. The film won the Best Picture Oscar, the first and only film to date to win the award without getting nominated in any of the other categories. The ledger of producer and 'fixer' Eddie Mannix details that the film made 1.2 mil. $ domestically and 1.3 mil. $ elsewhere for a 2.5 mil. $ gross. It was remade as the successful Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). Goulding returned with Blondie of the Follies (1932). Garbo returned in As You Desire Me (1932); Crawford in Letty Lynton (1932); and John Barrymore (Counsellor at Law (1933)) in State's Attorney (1932). Grand Hotel is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.58/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Grand Hotel?

The Mummy (1932) - Eerie awakening of the long dead by great talents Karloff, Johann, Freund, Pierce

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Colorful, beautifully painted poster for Karl Freund's The Mummy

The original Mummy movie from Universal Studios and Austrian-Hungarian director Karl Freund (Dracula (1931), cinematographer) is an atmospheric, creepy and a bit mystic movie.
A mummy tomb is opened by busy, British archaeologists, and an ancient mummy priest 'disappears', just as a formidable, Egyptian figure arrives, and a local beauty, Helen Grosvenor, begins to experience passions of an extraordinary kind!
Reincarnation and occult beliefs are a corner stone of Mummy, which originally included scenes of the female lead Grosvenor's incarnations in other ages, in which she gets killed. These scenes are, unfortunately, lost, as they were cut out before the film's release. They would be very interesting to see in The Mummy, which runs a little short as it is (at 73 minutes.) The film's reincarnations plot-line also seems a little confusing as it is now.
Hungarian-born Broadway actress Zita Johann (The Sin of Nora Morann (1933)) is intense as Grosvenor, probably because of her 'spirit of the theater'-approach to acting (a technique where she saw her work as sacred and in which she had to let herself 'die' to leave room for her characters); but also due to her personal, strong beliefs in the occult, and reincarnation in particular. (She has also claimed to have achieved levitation at at least one incident!)
Boris Karloff (Frankenstein (1931)), of course, portrays the mummy, - advertised in posters at the time as merely 'Karloff the Uncanny' (see poster above). His performance is down-played but very eerie, a blend of Karloff's ghoulish qualities as an actor and the great make-up effects by Jack Pierce (The Raven (1935)), which Karloff had an awful time getting on, and especially off, as the process was excruciatingly painful:

Boris Karloff in the first scene as the mummy in his sarcophagus in Karl Freund's The Mummy

In fact, we never see the mummy in this the original film walking around with his arms stretched out and mummy wrappings hanging from him; that only happens in the sequels. In Mummy, the title (romantic) heavy is never shown much, and yet when he is, the effects are impressive and would become iconic:

Iconic Boris Karloff-image from Karl Freund's The Mummy

Also impressive and goosebumps-inducing is the SPOILER stop-motion-death of the mummy in the end, reminiscent of the end of The Wolf Man (1941), which was also achieved by make-up artist Pierce.

The details:

Apart from atmospheric, high quality cinematography, - guaranteed by director Freund, who was mainly a fine cinematographer and was hired just two days before production! - two great performances and iconic, scary effects, Mummy also has a few issues:
The film has no score for long patches that go by in almost complete silence, and they tend to feel slow. The action of the film gets going surprisingly fast, as the mummy is revived within the first about 10 minutes, but then later on, there are slow patches, and some of the scenes do feel dated.
Despite these impediments, The Mummy is still an incredibly handsome, well-made film very worth watching.
After the successful Mummy action-comedy-adventure trilogy by Stephen Sommers, Universal has announced a remake of the original 1932 film, but no particulars are out on that yet.

Another irresistible poster for Karl Freund's The Mummy

Watch the great, re-release trailer here

Budget: 0.196 mil. $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty but reportedly a big hit

What do you think of The Mummy and its sequels and spin-offs?
Who should portray the mummy in a new version of the film?