(1950) 3 Bruce Eder Director Cy Endfield -- who would shortly decamp Hollywood for the somewhat more friendly surroundings of England, owing to his alleged "leftist" sympathies -- outdid himself in this independent production (originally released by United Artists). Actually, Endfield and the entire cast rose to the occasion in their work on this still-very-troubling film, based on an actual lynching that took place in California in 1933. Endfield and screenwriter Jo Pagano (adapting his own book) weave together two stories -- one about an ambitious journalist (Richard Carlson) who, true to the lowest order of his profession, latches on to a relatively routine crime story and creates a mood of panic and fear; and the other about a poor, unemployed working stiff (Frank Lovejoy) who teams up with a two-bit hood (Lloyd Bridges) for a series of robberies that escalate to kidnapping and murder. Lovejoy was seldom more sympathetic than he is here, as a man who is in over his head from the first moment we see him on-screen. And Lloyd Bridges gives one of his finest early performances, as a petty criminal whose darkest side is just waiting to burst forth. But as good as most of the acting is, Try And Get Me is really a director's movie, relying on atmosphere as much as performances to make its point -- the film weaves a grim picture of postwar America, that runs counter to a lot of extant accounts of the period. Endfield's handling of the last section of the movie, a harrowing public insurrection against law-and-order and the police, is no less gripping six decades later, and these sequences and all of the exterior shots have a documentary-like, neo-realist look that only enhances the impact of everything we see and hear. (And Endfield's treatment of the actual siege of the county jail, looked at today, seems almost like a dry-run for the director's work in Zulu a dozen or so years later). This is not a movie that anyone forgets easily, and in some ways outdoes the impact of Fritz Lang's treatment of the same incident, in Fury (1935).

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Try and Get Me (1950)

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Violence
Questionable for Children

genres

Crime

sub-genres

category

Feature

directed by

Cy Raker Endfield

countries

USA

released

1950

run time

91 min.

produced by

Republic

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by Hal Erickson synopsis

The Sound of Fury is better known by its general release title, Try and Get Me. Based on Jo Pagano's novel The Condemned, the film recreates a dismal chapter in American history. In 1933, the otherwise peace-loving citizens of San Jose, CA, were stirred up by blind hatred into forming a mob and lynching two accused kidnappers (this same incident was fictionalized in the 1935 Fritz Lang film Fury). Frank Lovejoy and Lloyd Bridges play a couple of down-and-outers who kidnap a wealthy youngster in hopes of getting a huge ransom. Things go terribly wrong, and the boy is killed. When the two kidnappers are arrested, a local journalist (Richard Carlson) inflames the populace with a series of hate-filled articles about the two prisoners. The journalist then stands by in mute horror as he watches the terrible results of his irresponsible print campaign.

characteristics

- Crime Gone Awry

- Robber

- Tabloid

- Revenge

- Retribution

- Retaliation

- Theft

- Unemployment

- Vigilante

- Yakuza

- Vengeance

- Vendetta

- Rampage

- Thief

- Murder

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