Imperfect justice : Fritz Lang's Fury (1936) and cinema's use of the trial form

This essay examines Fritz Lang's portrayal and use of justice in his first Hollywood film, Fury (1936) a film in which the main character, Joe Wilson (played by Spencer Tracy) is mistakenly arrested for a crime he did not commit. Lang was one of many notable German émigrés who fled Nazi Germany for America and eventually Hollywood. He returned on several occasions to the theme of justice, which is my starting point for this article. Before analysing Fury in detail, in particular its final trial scene, the article compares the film briefly to other Lang films about the law such as Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Lang's conception of justice differs from the dominant Hollywood view of the law, a realisation that is discussed in relation to other depictions of the law in Hollywood (such as Twelve Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird). In Lang's cinema, the law is not a fixed, stable and trustworthy institution, but rather one that is gullible and open to abuse. Lang places more faith in notions of personal moral justice, which win out in the end in Fury. This article also contextualises Fury and the work of Fritz Lang within existing discussions of the law and film, from which Lang is largely and notably absent

On Robert Flaherty and the documentary form

Sir Denis Forman, Nick Broomfield, Stella Bruzzi, Michael Reynard, Paul Henley and George Stoney discuss Robert Flaherty and the Documentary Form Originally interviewed as part of the film 'A Boatload of Wild Irishman' Distributed by Icarus Films (AKA 'The Wandering Irishman') A BOATLOAD OF WILD IRISHMEN includes testimony from Flaherty himself as well as contributions from amongst others, Richard Leacock - cameraman on 'Louisiana Story' (1948) and father of the contemporary hand-held documentary style, Martha Flaherty - Flaherty's Inuit granddaughter, George Stoney - documentary filmmaker and professor at New York University, Sean Crosson - film scholar at the Huston School of Film, Jay Ruby - anthropologist and film scholar at Temple University, and Deirdre Ni Chonghaile - musician and folklorist from Arainn, as well as telling interviews with the people whose parents and grandparents Flaherty put onto the cinema screens of the world: Inuit, Samoans and, of obvious personal interest to the Irish filmmakers, the 'wild men' of Aran. Originally interviewed as part of the film 'The Wandering Irishman' Distributed by Icarus Film

Dressing Mildred Pierce : costume and identity across the ages

This essay looks at the differing strategies used in costuming the protagonists of two versions of James M. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce. Michael Curtiz's 1945 wartime Hollywood film and Todd Haynes's 2011 five-part HBO miniseries are both very distinctly costumed, not only in the sense that you notice what characters are wearing – the detail, the fabric, the authenticity – but in the way that costume becomes an interpretational tool, a means by which character, identity and narrative can be accessed or understood. However, whereas in Curtiz's film the costumes dress the star, in Haynes's version they dress the character. Costume generally is a crucial element in a film's mise-en-scene, a purveyor of meaning or an analytical tool; though when it comes to femininity in particular, display, ostentation or an interest in fashion have too often been undervalued or deemed frivolous

Making a genre : the case of the contemporary true crime documentary

This article looks at the current documentary obsession with true crime stories, arguing that ultimately this heterogeneous series of individual texts loosely constitute a genre. Bookended by The Staircase from 2004 (the genre's touchstone or foundational text) and Making a Murderer from 2015 (the genre's most notorious example to date), this discussion will look at a diverse range of examples (series, podcasts, one-off documentaries) that nevertheless share common concerns around the law and how it can be represented, the truth, evidence and miscarriages of justice. Examples discussed also include: The Kick (2005), The 10th District Court (2006), Serial (2014) and The Jinx (2015). Even the title sequences are beginning to resemble each other – and those of related drama series – posing more questions about generic and media identity. True crime documentaries are hugely popular; they also serve justice, in that several of these television series, podcasts and web broadcasts have had a direct impact on actual cases