Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film after fleeing Nazi Germany is a powerful indictment of mob violence in America. Lang includes some real footage from a 1934 lynching, making Fury a frightening document as well as a compelling melodrama. Spencer Tracy portrays a gasoline station owner who, by a series of coincidences, is accused of a kidnapping and becomes the object of an angry mob who attempt to lynch him and ultimately burn down the jailhouse. He escapes at the last minute but is presumed to have died in the fire. From his position as a “dead” man, he follows the trial of twenty of the town's citizens for his murder--a trial that quickly becomes a farce. Lang's preoccupation with fatality, with man in continual flight from capture and death, is as evident in this melodrama as in his German films (including M and Dr. Mabuse). Despite an ending that makes obvious concessions to box-office concerns, the Joseph L. Mankiewicz production is a landmark social drama that is still timely.