I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Having returned from fighting in World War I, James Allen (Paul Muni) doesn't want to settle into a humdrum life and decides to set off to find his fortune. He travels the length and breadth of America, working as a skilled tradesman in the construction industry. When times get tough however, he finds himself living in a shelter where an acquaintance suggests they go out for a hamburger. What the friend really has in mind is to rob the diner and Allen soon finds himself working on a chain gang with a long jail sentence. Allen manages to escape however and heads to Chicago where over several years he slowly but surely works his way up the ladder to become one of the most respected construction engineers in the city. His past catches up with him and despite protestations from civic leaders and his many friends in Chicago, he finds himself again on the chain gang. Escaping for a second time, he accepts that to survive, he must lead a life of crime. - Actors:
- Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, Noel Francis, Preston Foster, Allen Jenkins, Berton Churchill, Edward Ellis, David Landau, Hale Hamilton, Sally Blane, Louise Carter, Willard Robertson, Robert McWade, Robert Warwick, William Le Maire, Erville Alderson, Irving Bacon, Reginald Barlow, James Bell
- Directors:
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Producers:
- Hal B. Wallis
- Writers:
- Robert E. Burns, Howard J. Green, Brown Holmes
- Others:
- Nathan Levinson
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Collections:
- Award Winners, Oscar Nominations Competition 2025
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- Not released
- Run Time:
- 92 minutes
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Reviews (3) of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Chain Gangs, Paperwork, and Wild Eyes in the Dark - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang review by griggs
You know that feeling when an actor is so switched-on you stop noticing the camera? That’s Paul Muni here. He’s got that small, punchy, permanently alert vibe — think Cagney or Garfield, but with panic simmering under the skin.
The film covers years quickly, but it never loses you. The chain-gang scenes are brutal and, oddly, sometimes beautiful in their starkness: dust, sweat, bodies turned into production. The tension keeps tightening. The moment where he hides underwater and breathes through a reed while the bloodhounds close in is grimly brilliant.
Because it’s pre-Code, it doesn’t pretend the machinery of justice is fair. It shows America as petty, vindictive, and trapped in paperwork. You can read it as a chain-gang horror story, a Kafka maze, or a film about how fast veterans get discarded once the uniforms come off.
And then there’s the ending: Muni’s wild eyes in the dark. That’s the image that follows you out.
Protest Film. - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang review by Steve
One of the great films of the '30s; a classic of social protest which played a role in ending the chain gangs in the US southern states. Paul Muni plays a bum wrongly sentenced to hard labour by a corrupt and sadistic penal system. Loosely based on a true story, the message is that this isn't merely an unjust destiny for an innocent man, but for anyone.
Robert Burns (Muni) returns from WWI to penury; one of the forgotten men. A bystander in a petty crime he is sentenced to ten years on a Georgia chain gang. He escapes to become a successful engineer, but having been tracked down to Chicago he agrees to return to jail on the understanding that he will be pardoned after 90 days.
The state is offended by Burns' public criticism and sends him to the foulest chain gang in the south and withdraws its promise. I can picture Muni's face now, his pardon denied, sent back into hell. Muni is magnificent. Some of the support acting creeks like a haunted house, but most are convincing and very moving.
I Am a Fugitive... delivers a subtle appraisal of the purposes of the prison system. It's a gripping polemic about human dignity and the kindness of strangers delivered in the punchy, concise style of Warner Brothers in the thirties. There are many unforgettable scenes. And the famous ending is a heartbreaker.
Unavailable - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang review by rr
I would like to see this classic film, but it’s ‘ unavailable ‘, as are many other classic films from the 1930s