Justiça Injusta

Despite a catch-penny tile, "Try and Get Me" (aka Sound of Fury) remains a truly frightening movie whose disturbing imagery lingers long after the voice-over reassurances subside. The director, Cy Endfield, was one of the lower profile victims of the Mc Carthy purges. Viewing this movie now, it's easy to see why.

Family man and returning vet Howard Tyler (played by the always low-key Frank Lovejoy) is recruited into a life of crime by no more than ordinary desires for the American Dream. Desperate and unemployed, he falls into the clutches of a swaggering stickup man superbly played by a preening Lloyd Bridges. (Notice how subtly Bridges bends Tyler to his will on their first meeting at the bowling alley.) Joining Bridges, Tyler finally gets the standing he desires, but the spiral he has entered dooms him and his family's share of America's promise. (Note that conspicuous among the lynch mob's vanguard are fraternity boys, true to the actual event on which the movie is based.)

Throughout, the lighting and photography effectively undermine the facile voice of reason that the producers probably felt obligated to include. Endfield may have wanted an anti- violence film, but the resulting visual landscape implies a world of endemic violence. A sense of powerlessness pervades the film, one that mere admonishments cannot overcome. As a result, the characters appear caught in some terrible metaphysical web from which there is no escape. Events march relentlessly on to a conclusion that remains one of the most harrowing in Hollywood history. This is film noir at its darkest and most frightening.

Something should be noted in passing about the compellingly exotic performance of Katherine Locke as Hazel the manicurist. Watch her facial expressions as this highly repressed plain-faced woman experiences yet one more rejection in what a paste-on smile shows to be a lifetime of rejections. Never has a blossom perched so precariously on a cheap hairdo conveyed as much lower-class longing as hers, while the car ride with a guilt-ridden Tyler could serve as tawdry inspiration for a dozen feminist tracts. What ever became of this unusual actress, I wonder.

Without doubt, however, the film's dramatic high point is the lynch mob. It's one of the most coldly unnerving 20 minutes in movie annals, far surpassing (in my view) the better-known Fury (1936) in its depiction of mass violence. The fact that the mob is made up of ordinary citizens brought to fever pitch is especially telling. Unthinking violence is thus shown as potentially present in us all.

At the same time, the screenplay refuses to take the easy way out. In fact, Howard and Jerry are guilty, unlike, say, the three unfortunate cowboys in The Oxbow Incident (1943). Thus, what repels us is not the fact that innocent men are killed for a crime they didn't commit. That would be too easy. Instead, I think we're unnerved by how the crowd appears to celebrate the brutality of vigilante justice. Endfield succeeds in making this aspect especially ugly. Yes, in a very general sense, justice is served—murderers are in fact punished for their crime—but if so, justice is served in a particularly barbaric way even if the act does have popular support. In my little book, Endfield has fashioned the most effective of all anti- lynching movies, in part because it doesn't take the easy way out.

That Endfield exiled himself to England and a conventional career with Stanley Baker, shows how much was lost among those purge victims whose disappearance, unlike many others, went generally unnoticed. Just a couple of years after the remarkable "Try and Get Me" (and Endfield's also provocative "Underworld Story"), Hollywood began sanitizing the screen with the escapism of period spectacles, Technicolor westerns, and full-cleavage sex goddesses. Indeed times had changed. As Endfield already knew, the studios had to fight the Cold War too. There would be no more thought-provoking Try and Get Me's.

Interesting little B-movie thriller, which starts with the theme of what an honest but desperate man will do to help his family survive, moves on to a loaded discussion on sensationalist lurid journalism before ending with a damning indictment of mob rule.

It's quite a trip and to get us there introduces us to the memorable character played by Lloyd Bridges, a cocky young psychopath whose petty crimes take along with him on the lure of easy money, unemployed, hard up family man Frank Lovejoy. It's not long though before Bridges' true character comes to light, escalating in no time to a kidnapping and brutal murder with disastrous outcomes for all concerned.

For its time, this is all pretty heady stuff, shown to us in matter of fact style by director Endfield with to my mind anyway, little real deference to noir conventions. The film is a bit slow to get started but once Bridges appears, it picks up on his manic energy. Some of the peripheral characters are just a bit too obvious, like the humanist professor friend or the sensationalist journalist whose screaming headlines, the film would have it, egg the local townsfolk to storming the jail while said journalist's own realisation of his part in the mayhem is also a little laboured but these are counteracted in some measure by some effective low-key character acting by Lovejoy and Katherine Locke as the lovelorn girl with whom Bridges sets him up for alibi purposes.

The concluding riot scene, (with it seems a lot of university students to the fore!) gets the biggest budget and is effectively staged, reminiscent of its predecessor in Lang's classic "Fury", before the big downbeat message is double-underlined for us as the credits roll.

A very watchable and considering its era, bold movie with interesting characters, dealing with big subjects and ending with a thundering moral message to boot. Quite a lot to pack in and done pretty well all round, I'd say.

I, too, saw this picture as a child, on television, alone, late at night, and I can still recall the powerful impression it made. Truly frightening in its revelations of human depravity and mob violence. Lloyd Bridges' best performance by far, he is absolutely gripping as the deranged and heartless murderer. The scene in which he is in his cell, with the mob breaking into the prison and coming to get him, is stunning in its power. I haven't seen the film in a half century, but I still remember those moments.

This sad history really happened on thirties in San Jose California and later a book and on fifties into a movie about a jobless guy played by Lovejoy who try gets a job without success, so find a clever guy Lloyd Bridges as Jerry Slocum who invite him to a little job as night driver, after few works they made a kidnapping and end up killing the victim, Tyler now is a disturbing person who is involved in a murder, Jerry actually the brain in all this mess trying to get the money, but all fall down after Tyler had a nervous breakdown, it's about how the press can pressure all people to make revenge for ours hands, the movie is good, although l'd never saw so realistic acting from Lloyd Bridges like that fantastic!!! Another character to be mentioned is Velma played by gorgeous Adele Jergins who is a woman to pursuit an easy life, great Noir from the Cy Endfield!!

Resume:

First watch: 2017 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8

A bit preachy in the style of the day but a remarkable film. The opening is especially strong. Among the interesting touches, the movie lynch mob is made up mainly of college students wearing their school t-shirts. New York Model Adele Jergens didn't have much of a Hollywood career but she's right on the money in this one. Although the time frame is post WWII, the story is based on an actual lynching in San Jose, California, in 1933. Reporter Royce Brier of the San Francisco Chronicle won a Pulitzer for his account of the event.California Governor James Rolph Jr. was quoted as saying he would like to turn over all jail inmates serving sentences for kidnapping to the custody of "those fine patriotic San Jose citizens, who know how to handle such a situation."