Try and Get Me

Introduced by Eddie Muller, representing the UCLA Archive and the Film Noir Foundation!

Soon-to-be-blacklisted director Cy Endfield’s coruscating film is based on Joe Pagano’s novel The Condemned (Pagano also wrote the adaptation), which was in turn based on the actual 1933 case of two men from San Jose who were taken into custody for the kidnapping and murder of a wealthy man and then dragged from their jail cells and lynched (the story of Fritz Lang’s American debut, Fury, is drawn from the same incident). Endfield’s film, largely shot on location and animated by an acute awareness of class and economic pressures, carefully builds scene by scene to a truly harrowing climax. With terrific performances by Lloyd Bridges and Frank Lovejoy as the kidnappers. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive; preservation funding provided by the Film Noir Foundation.