After fleeing Nazi Germany in the early 1930s shortly after The Testament of Dr Mabuse was completed and banned, Fritz Lang wanted to get a sense of American culture and society and took a road trip where he came across alarming contemporary stories of mob rule.
Set in a fictional small town and based on a true story, Fury becomes a searing indictment of mob justice and lynching which chillingly still resonates with last year’s storming of the US Capitol. The film is given tremendous intensity by the naturalistic performances of leads Spencer Tracy, as the man unjustly accused, and Sylvia Sidney as his fiancé, enhanced by Joseph Ruttenberg's deliberately expressionistic lighting. Lang, a great social observer, recognised the parallel between German’s complicity in Hitler’s rise to power with that of people in small American towns who became complicit in the lynchings. Fury is still a striking cautionary tale.
