Fritz Lang's first Hollywood filmafter fleeing Nazi Germany is a compelling social melodrama with manyvisual elements of Expressionism-turned-noir. Spencer Tracy, a strangerin a small town, by a series of coincidences becomes the object of alynch mob who burn down the jailhouse and, presumably, him with it. Fromhis position as a "dead" man he follows the trial of twenty ofthe town's citizens for murder. Lang's preoccupation with fatality, withman in continual flight from capture and death, is as evident here as inhis German films. The opening scenes of Tracy and fiancée SylviaSidney are etched in ominous fog and it never gets any better for them.Like Lang, they become aliens in their own country. The damning dialoguepicks up in America where Lang left off in Germany ("In thiscountry," it is bruited, "people don't land in jail unlessthey're guilty"). Lang uses cinema itself as his closing statement:newsreel footage convicts the murderous mob. As in many of the films inour series, the production is filled with emigré artists,including producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz.