Carsey-Wolf Center at UC Santa Barbara 
Panic!: The Sound of Fury
- Tuesday, January 28, 2025 / 7:00 PM - 9:30 PM (PST)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 2K digital projection (93 minutes)
- With Rebecca Prime (author of Hollywood Exiles in Europe)
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Director: Cy Endfield
Starring: Frank Lovejoy, Kathleen Ryan, Richard Carlson, Lloyd Bridges
Directed by Cy Endfield and drawn from the novel The Condemned by Jo Pagano, The Sound of Fury (also known by the title Try and Get Me!) stands as an intense warning against the institutionalization of mob justice. The film follows Howard Tyler, a down-on-his-luck businessman from the East Coast, struggling to make a life for himself and his family in California. When Tyler meets Jerry Slocum, a charming petty thief, he’s recruited into an escalating series of robberies that culminate in the kidnapping of one of the town’s wealthy elite. After the job goes sideways and the men are arrested, the public—inflamed by the violent rhetoric of the local newspaper—seeks to exact justice of its own.
Made as the Hollywood Blacklist was gathering force, The Sound of Fury is a profoundly resonant film for the current moment. It depicts an America of unequal opportunity riven by class tensions, and it accuses media capitalism of placing profits over the truth. Its concluding scenes of a frenzied mob, storming a civic building and inflicting its own idea of justice, are all too familiar. The film’s director, Cy Endfield, was blacklisted shortly after the film’s release, a victim of the repressive Cold War consensus and social hysteria that the film critiques. In the current moment, the film is worth revisiting for its encouragement to swim against the times and for its unflinching assessment of the shortcomings of the American dream.
Rebecca Prime (author of Hollywood Exiles in Europe: the Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture) will join moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Film historian Rebecca Prime
Rebecca Prime is a film historian based in Washington, D.C. Her first book, Hollywood Exiles in Europe: the Blacklist and Cold War Film Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2014), received the Best First Book Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. She was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; she received a Public Scholars Fellowship in 2022 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her current book project, Hoover vs. Hollywood: Race, Revolution, and the Most Dangerous Film of 1968. She is the former Editor of Film Quarterly and has written for publications including The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. She holds a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA.
Moderator Ross Melnick (Film and Media Studies, UCSB)
Ross Melnick is Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He was named an Academy Film Scholar and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow for his book Hollywood’s Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World (Columbia University Press, 2022), which received the Richard Wall Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association. He is also the author of American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (CUP, 2012), co-editor of Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (AFI/Routledge, 2018), and co-author of Cinema Treasures (MBI, 2004), inspired by the website (cinematreasures.org), which he co-founded 25 years ago. His research has appeared in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, The Moving Image, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Aniki, and in numerous edited collections.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
CWC Presents: Panic!
The Carsey-Wolf Center’s 2024-25 feature series Panic! explores the complex relationship between media, an anxious public, and the turbulent currents of social, cultural, and moral panic. The series will examine how such panics have appeared on screen over the decades, but also consider how the screen itself—as technology, as gathering space, and as a site of fantasy and desire—becomes the object of reactionary backlash. Panic! will be a yearlong showcase of the films, discourses, and cultural practices that have tested the limits of public acceptability, and that have much to teach us about the cycles of panic that define our own political moment.
CWC Classics
The CWC Classics program celebrates cinema’s rich history, bringing classic films back to the big screen for critical viewing and discussion. These events feature filmmakers, academics, and professionals who can contextualize the production and historical impact of the films. The series occasionally presents classic films in their original 16 or 35 mm formats. CWC Classics events celebrate the history and significance of cinema’s enduring legacy.