I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
One of the most celebrated pre-Code Hollywood films is <PERSON> I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang starring <PERSON> as <PERSON>, a man who serves as <PERSON> poster child. In the movie, <PERSON> returns from WWI a changed man, and with dependable employment lined up, he seeks a different life. Instead, he becomes a vagabond and is subsequently sent to a chain gang for a crime he didn't commit. Unable to stand the brutality of life on the chain gang, he successfully escapes, soon becoming a successful and upstanding citizen. 217
When his malicious wife (played by <PERSON>) rats him out, he agrees to return to the chain gang, but the Southern authorities don't keep up their end of the bargain, and he is relegated to life on the chain gang indefinitely. While the film excels not only for its bleak, relentless, and thrilling narrative, it is an early example of a Hollywood social justice movie, using entertainment to point out the injustice of the chain gang system. The film's weaknesses are few, but it is at times heavy-handed in its execution, the Southern officials presented as vengeful bullies without nuance (which probably doesn't stray that far from the truth), and the framing of his <PERSON>'s wife as a money-grubbing and sexually licentious blackmailer is quite misogynistic. Despite these criticisms, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang remains an essential early sound film, the kind that could not have been just a few years earlier AND later (thanks to the institution of the Hays Code in 1934). 217