MORRIS DICKSTEIN
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roaded by a crude legal system into ten years on a chain gang. But what
made the movie famous was something more visceral and concrete: the
concentration-camp atmosphere of the prison barracks, the casual brutal–
ity of the overseers and the chain gang itself, the wasting away of a des–
perately sick prisoner who's still forced to work, the torture of the
sweat-box and the inedible food, and the excruciating feat of the escape,
from the removal of Muni's leg-irons with blows from a sledge-hammer
to his flight through the swamps pursued by vicious armed guards with
snarling dogs. These scenes have the sensory and social impact of the early
Soviet films. Their memorable imagery would reappear in later films
from
Sullivan 's Travels
to
Cool-Hand Luke
and Jim Jarmusch's
Down
By
Law,
set in the Louisiana bayous. I
Am a Fugitive,
like Upton Sinclair's
Jungle
and Steinbeck's
Grapes oj Wrath,
was one of those works that ac–
tually made a difference in the world, provoking violent controversy and
leading to reform of the grotesque system of Justice' it vividly exposed.
But the really radical twist in the movie hasn't been fully understood.
After escaping north and reversing his two names, James Allen man–
ages to invert his position in society as well. He gets the job in con–
struction he's always wanted - a job that his work on the chain-gang
had obscenely parodied - and between 1924 and 1929, in Chicago, under
his new identity, he builds himself up into one of the upstanding citizens
of the community. Blackmailed and eventually betrayed by a woman he's
forced to marry, he returns voluntarily to the South, by agreement, to
serve out a symbolic ninety-day sentence. But the unnamed state - actu–
ally Georgia - goes back on its word, subjects him to even more brutal–
ity than before, then refuses to release him at the promised time.
His only way out is another escape. Now, at top speed, all he did
must be done again. But the frenzied, desperate, utterly disillusioned
creature who flees this time is not the cocky, confident person who
made it out before. And during the escape he loses the old man - the
cynical realist who was stunned that he'd returned - who not only rep–
resents the only bit of humanity he's ever encountered on the chain
gang, but is also the symbol of his own dwindling humanity and re–
silience.
Careening along in a truck-load of dynamite, James Allen has gone
from being an unfairly victimized citizen, still resourceful and full of
hope, to an explosive desperado hell-bent on freedom or self-destruction.
Now there's no question of his putting his life together again, not just
because of the Depression but because of his own depression. His self-as–
surance has crumbled with his trust. The man who was stupid enough to
walk back into the chain gang now sees through everything: "The state's
