The Depression forms the backdrop for a harrowing tale of a man's wrongful imprisonment, escape, and fated return. Few Hollywood feature films of its era succeeded as this one did in portraying the mechanisms of the real world as overpoweringly surreal, with rich chiaroscuro effects and a remarkable use of sound. Critic Dilys Powell wrote in 1946, "So far as the imaginative use of the sound track in film narrative is concerned (there) has been little improvement on the sequence in LeRoy's film where the convict runs madly through the swamps, with whistles blowing and sirens hooting and bloodhounds howling and yelping in pursuit; where the spectator first hears the noise of the chase, then listens with the quarry hiding under the surface of the swamp-water, all sound shut out."