Laissez-nous vivre

This was horrible social commentary on our American legal system...that unfortunately hasn't changed too much since this film was made.

Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Fonda are both fantastic and really make this film. Their cheerfully innocent characters make this even more of a tragedy. On the verge of their wedding, Henry Fonda's character is arrested for robbery and two murders that he didn't commit along with his friend. Maureen O'Sullivan who really did spend the morning with him provided him an alibi which the jury doesn't believe because she is the fiancé. The witness all misidentified our hero and friend after their were primed by the district attorney about how desperately we want to keep our city safe.

This works so well as Henry Fonda's character is almost Pollyanna like in his believe in the truth, justice and the American system, at one point he even tries to build up his grind before they are taken to death row by telling him what the American flag symbolizes. This makes his final breakdown even harder to watch and when he finally tells his fiancé Mary that there is no hope for the little guy...well no truer words have been spoken.

The contrast of the happy couple at the beginning and the shattered shambles at the end is amazing.

After having recently sat on a jury in my local district...I can sadly say this kind of thing is still happening and it is really disheartening to think that peoples' convictions are not swayed at all by "innocent until proven guilty". It is the prosecutions job to prove that they did it...even if you believe that they did, you can't convict without proof. Of course I firmly believe that the guilty should pay for their crimes...but the system is supposed to protect the innocent and I am afraid that it doesn't and a lot of procedures are just perpetuating the problem as seen in this film.

Soapbox aside this is a wonderful well acted film that you will enjoy watching on many levels no matter what your personal beliefs are.

In Henry Fonda's film career, this one is under the radar, and that's unfortunate, because it'a fantastic film that examines the system of law & order, and how it can screw up. There is a lot of grit and reality here, as often in real life, innocent people are convicted, and even executed. Often the state might have some reasonable suspicion that they may not be guilty, or may know their case isn't as strong as it should be, but they pursue and still get that verdict.

Eye witness testimony can often be a problem too... there have been cases where the science pointed in a different direction, but a jury went for an eye witness, and thus they were convicted. For example, how many people are in prison today for a rape they didn't commit? More than you might want to know.

That's what this movie makes you think about, as the system nearly leads them to their death. Henry Fonda may be a white man, but you could put any man or woman in this story and it still works, they can be black, or white, or any other race, and it still works.

Because this story reveals the truth, the system has flaws, the system is not perfect. Innocent people live out their lives in prison, or are executed. In 1939, the year this movie came out, there were 161 executions. How many of them were actually guilty? That question, is the very power of this film.

This is a dark tale about two likable people. Well, three, if we count Ralph Bellamy: He is tossed at us in medias res and is not convincing as a police lieutenant.

The young lovers are Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Fonda. He drives a cab. She works in a restaurant. He wants them to marry and is planning to buy a cab and maybe a few, to start a fleet.

Two decades before he starred in the Hitchcock film of this name, though, he is the wrong man. Not for the adoring (and lovely) O' Sullivan. No, he is erroneously arrested for a robbery -- and falsely identified by a pack of jackals who'd been at the crime scene.

One thing I noticed is the response O'Sullivan has when he takes her to look at some nice little homes. She's thrilled and grateful. It's amusing to contrast this to the scornful way the Audrey Totter character acts when Richard Basehart, her unwisely adoring husband in "Tension," takes her to see a little house in the suburbs he's picked out for them.

Lucien Ballard was a marvelous cinematographer -- here and always. This movie has the feel of German Expressionism, which includes a Weill-like musical score. But I'm not sure how much of the Expressionism is intended and how much is a matter of budget: For example, there are several scenes in which snow falls. The snow has a highly unreal look. It really LOOKS like soap flakes. And in an early scene when O'Sullivan humors a drunk at the restaurant where she works, the other diners laugh in the oddest way: We're meant to feel they take it in a goodhearted manner. But it sounds for all the world like a laugh track or the audience at a vaudeville show.

The change in Fonda is very impressive. I really empathized with his feeling at the start that everything is going his way; that the world is a wonderful place to be. If this were a musical comedy, a song to that effect would have followed. But Fonda didn't make musicals. It's pretty clear that he's going to be disabused of this notion; I've been there too. And he is indeed.

Depression Era flick based on true story, but scaled down due to political pressure on Columbia studio (IMDB). O'Sullivan and Fonda are an all-American couple looking to marry. But then Fonda's mistakenly identified as one of three robber-killers, and sentenced to death. However, the deeply committed O'Sullivan refuses to give up and eventually enlists cop Bellamy to help. So, can they prove Fonda's innocence before his execution date.

The subtext pits "little people" like the leads against an unfeeling city bureaucracy more concerned with procedure than justice. Then too, eye-witness testimony is shown as faulty, along with miles of inflexible red-tape. The plight of ordinary folks is further suggested by the dumping of edible food the hungry need in order to drive up wholesale market prices, a not uncommon practice of the time. On the other hand, reference is made to FHA home loans as part of the New Deal's effort to ameliorate conditions. Fonda and O'Sullivan had planned their future around such a home loan. Much of this subtext, I believe, reflects common feelings of the time.

Acting-wise, O'Sullivan gets to run a gamut of emotions from dreamy eyed lover to wild-eyed desperation. That dreamy eyed first part where the couple plans their conventional future pulls us effectively into their later plight. Note, however, that the countdown to execution is not exploited in the fashion of similar crime films. The one real stretch is cop Bellamy risking his career by taking up O'Sullivan's cause. It does however show the potential feeling side to an impersonal bureaucracy, which probably helped assuage Columbia's censorship battle with Massachusetts, the locale of the actual occurrence.

Despite the obscurity, it's an interesting little film (68-minutes) that makes me wonder what the intended version would have been like.

We watched this film for the very first time last night and what a surprisingly good film it is. Of course with a young Henry Fonda in the lead part, we should have known. Fonda plays 'Brick' Tennant, a young man who is working as a taxi driver and saving hard to marry his sweetheart. Through a series of co-incidences and the lack of a hard alibi, he is suspected - and eventually found guilty of - robbery and murder. It's a classic 'wrong man' thriller, made all the better by the careful character introduction and set-up early on in the film. If the film has a message, it is that the death penalty is a dangerous thing, especially when careers and promotions are on the line. There's no slack in the film, and its short 68 minute running time whizzes by. A little gem of a film, and a story which Fonda would tell again in Hitchcock's 'The Wrong Man' of 1956, another cracker.