Fritz Lang

An honest detective's investigation into a corrupt cop's suicide triggers a series of murders meant to keep police malfeasance from being exposed.

Mae Doyle comes back to her hometown a cynical woman. Her brother Joe fears that his love, fish cannery worker Peggy, may wind up like Mae. Mae marries Jerry and has a baby; she is happy but restless, drawn to Jerry's friend Earl. The bitter and cynical Mae Doyle returns to the fishing village where she was raised after deceptive loves and life in New York. She meets her brother, the fisherman Joe Doyle, and he lodges her in his home. Mae is courted by Jerry D'Amato, a good and naive man that owns the boat where Joe works, and he introduces his brutal friend Earl Pfeiffer, who works as theater's projectionist and is cheated by his wife. She does not like Earl and his jokes, but Jerry considers him his friend and they frequently see each other. Mae decides to accept the proposal of Jerry and they get married and one year later they have a baby girl. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil After ten long years of absence, Mae Doyle returns to her hometown of Monterey, California, disillusioned by the big-city lifestyle of New York. There, unattainable Mae's air of sophistication and confidence catches the eye of the hard-working, good-natured fisherman, Jerry, and his misogynistic, patronising, movie projectionist friend, Earl, who, right from the start, begins to court her. But, Mae has had her share of loser boyfriends, and even though she seems determined to spare an innocent her cynicism, she decides to take a second chance at love and marries Jerry. Now, one year and a baby daughter later, a silent undercurrent of unspoken desires and raw lust threaten Jerry's happiness. Once, Jerry promised that he would do anything for Mae. Is he prepared to lose everything in the aftermath of love? —Nick Riganas Without warning to anyone at her destination, Mae Doyle, having been east for ten years, returns home to the fishing community of Monterey, California to regroup in a sudden change in fortune having to do with her married politician lover having passed away and thus time away unfulfilled in her goal of a rich husband to take care of her. She moves back into the family cottage occupied by her brother, fisherman Joe Doyle, who is ambivalent to her return in they having different outlooks in life, he who just wants to settle down in their blue collar life with his cannery worker girlfriend, Peg. While Joe is concerned that Mae will give Peg, whose life experience has been relegated to Monterey, grand ideas of the world, Mae herself has to decide where her future lies as she catches the attention of two very different men. The first is Jerry D'Amato, Joe's boss, a simple man who lives with and is thus caregiver to his drunkard widowed father and his freeloading maternal Uncle Vince. Jerry wants a traditional family life with a wife who would look after him, while he in return would never hurt her, he thus being a "safe" but boring choice. The second is Joe's best friend, Earl Pfeiffer, who works as a projectionist at the movie theater. While Earl is already married, to a chorus girl on the road more often than she is at home, he too is a restless soul which manifests itself often in inappropriate behavior. While Mae understand someone like Earl more so than someone like Jerry, she also knows that Earl has the potential to be bad for her, especially in they being so like minded and in he seemingly and inherently not liking women. —Huggo

When a wrongly-accused prisoner barely survives a lynch-mob attack and is presumed dead, he vindictively decides to fake his death and frame the mob for his supposed murder. Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant are in love, but he doesn't have enough money for them to get married, so Katherine moves across the country to make money. But things go disastrously wrong for Joe when he stops in a small town and is mistaken for a wanted kidnapper. Through the course of the movie, Fritz Lang shows us how a decent and once-civilized man can become a ruthless and bitter man. Based on the story "Mob Rule" by Norman Krasna. —Andre'a M. Thompson <athompso@ziggy.st.hmc.edu> Hard worker Joseph "Joe" Wilson and teacher Katherine Grant are in love but do not have enough money to get married. Katherine gets a better job in Washington and together with Joe, they save money to get married one year later. Joe quits his job in the factory and uses his savings to buy a gas station, working with his brothers Charlie and Tom. He makes enough money to get married with Katherine and buys a car. While driving with his dog Rainbow to meet his fiancée, Joe is stopped in Strand by the redneck deputy "Bugs" Meyers as a suspect in the kidnapping of a girl in the Peabody case. When they find peanuts in his pocket and a $5 bill in his pocket with the numeration of the money paid for ransom, Joe is arrested in jail for investigation. "Bugs" Meyers makes a comment in the barbershop about the prisoner and sooner the gossip is spread in the little town. As a tale never loses in the telling, Joe is accused by the population of kidnapping and they try to invade the police station to lynch him. For political reasons, Governor Burt does not send the National Guard to help Sheriff Tad Hummel to protect Joe and the police station is burnt down by the vigilantes. Katherine witnesses the action and has a breakdown. Joe is presumed dead but out of the blue he appears at his brothers' apartment seeking justice. He had learned that in accordance with the laws, Lynch Law is murder in the first degree and his brothers open a case against 22 inhabitants of Strand. The prosecutor Mr. Adams accepts the case and Katherine Grant is the prime witness. Joe's revenge is set in motion. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil It's been one year since Chicago pump jockey Joe Wilson and schoolteacher Katherine Grant have seen each other, when Katherine moved to Capitol City for a better paying job so that they jointly could earn enough money quicker to be able to get married. Joe is now driving to Capitol City in he feeling they have enough money for that permanent reunion. En route in the small town of Strand, Joe is stopped by the local sheriff in they having circumstantial evidence that he may be involved in a kidnapping. Word spreads quickly throughout the town that "a perpetrator" in the kidnapping has been apprehended and is being held in the local jail. Wanting their form of justice faster than what the sheriff's department is able to do, many of the townsfolk decide to take matters into their own hands and storm the jail, ultimately burning it down, the fire started just as Katherine, hearing about Joe's incarceration, arrives on the scene to see Joe in the cell window of the burning building, she witnessing Joe's death which places her in a semi-comatose state in emotional shock. Two subsequent items emerge which change the nature of the matter. First, the true kidnappers are apprehended in another town, they who confess to the crime. As such under the law, those in Strand that stormed the jail and burned down the building could be charged with Joe's murder. And second, Joe, aware of the law, reveals himself to be alive only to his two brothers, Charlie and Tom Wilson, back in Chicago, Joe who was able to escape from the burning building. With Charlie and Tom's help, Joe wants his own form of vigilante justice to see that those who "killed" him are charged and convicted with his murder which he doesn't believe will happen in the townsfolk protecting their own regardless of what they know to be the truth. In the process of the subsequent trial, Katherine has evidence that Joe is actually alive. She herself has to decide what to do, especially in believing that Joe's own vigilantism is not the man she knows and is not a foundation for a life together with him if that's what he still has in mind. —Huggo Passing through a small town, Joe is arrested for kidnapping. A lynch mob burns down the jail and Joe is believed killed. The incident has been captured on newsreel film and, for revenge, Joe urges his brothers to use the film to prove the mob guilty of his murder. —Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>