1932-33 – Paul Muni
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
There is no question that Paul muni was a popular actor, and a good one, at that. The part he played in the socially conscious film was a pretty demanding role, both physically and emotionally. The film is the story of a man who is down on his luck, and is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gets arrested for a crime he only committed at the point of a gun, and is sentenced to ten years of hard labor. The movie did a fair job of pointing out the inhumane treatment of men in the criminal justice system of the South.
Muni plays James Allen, a good and honest man. On the chain gang, he is worked out in the hot from sun-up to sun-down, swinging a sledge hammer or a pick without rest. He is fed gruel, and is beaten or whipped bloody when he complains about anything. After a year of this torture, he makes his plans, and with his brains and a fair bit of luck, he escapes. He runs to Chicago, and gets a job in construction. As it turns out, he has a talent for it, and becomes a prominent construction engineer.
But a jealous lover learns his dirty little secret, and turns him in when he rejects her. In an effort to live his life without the onus of his sentence hanging over his head, he agrees to turn himself in and return to the chain gang for a period of three months, after which the unnamed Southern state promises to release him, in light of his honesty and prominence in Chicago. But they lied. The scene where James learns that they just wanted him back in chains for the full remaining nine years is heartbreaking to watch, and Muni really did a great job of letting the audience feel his shock and horror, knowing that he had only gone back out of a sense of honesty, and the desire to live a clean life.
So he escapes a second time. But by this time, his sanity is so frayed, and he fears capture so much, that he is constantly looking over his shoulder, jumping at the slightest noise. Muni was great in that final scene, when the woman who loves him tries to get him to come home. He cannot. And as he backs into the shadows, she pleads with him, asking, “How do you live?” His reply is haunting. “I steal!”