One can only wonder what this tale of disillusionment and vengeance might have like had it been made at Warner instead of MGM.
An innocent man ( Spencer Tracy ), on his way to be married is arrested in a small town on suspicion of kidnapping. There, he is railroaded by by a mob of incredibly ignorant bumpkins - led by a horribly miscast Bruce Cabot - trapped in the local jail, and ( presumably ) burned alive. This ought to be powerful stuff. Tracy and co-star Sylvia Sydney do their best, but not even Fritz Lang's direction can save the day.
The problem is the supporting cast. Whereas Warner employed an impressive stable of character actors, MGM flooded it's movies with cardboard caricatures. ( I have no idea why this is; it simply is. ) The townsfolk are totally unbelievable, down to the last man Jack and Jill of them. Outside of a few touches borrowed from Eisenstein, the crowd scenes are ludicrous. This fatally undermines what ought to have been a gut wrenching cinematic experience.
Damn MGM, anyway!
An innocent man ( Spencer Tracy ), on his way to be married is arrested in a small town on suspicion of kidnapping. There, he is railroaded by by a mob of incredibly ignorant bumpkins - led by a horribly miscast Bruce Cabot - trapped in the local jail, and ( presumably ) burned alive. This ought to be powerful stuff. Tracy and co-star Sylvia Sydney do their best, but not even Fritz Lang's direction can save the day.
The problem is the supporting cast. Whereas Warner employed an impressive stable of character actors, MGM flooded it's movies with cardboard caricatures. ( I have no idea why this is; it simply is. ) The townsfolk are totally unbelievable, down to the last man Jack and Jill of them. Outside of a few touches borrowed from Eisenstein, the crowd scenes are ludicrous. This fatally undermines what ought to have been a gut wrenching cinematic experience.
Damn MGM, anyway!