Movie Reflection: They Won't Forget

 

They Won't Forget (1937) is a film that shows both the evils of vengeance, and the role of the press in society and the justice system. We see how the press can influence both the government and the public to believe whatever they write. In the case of this film, the press was able to convince the public of a man's guilt before a trial was held, and his "investigating" was used by the government to tailor their prosecution. 

It's Confederate Memorial Day in the southern town of Flodden, and a young girl is found dead at her business school. The town's district attorney, Andrew Griffin, who hopes to be governor or in the Senate, wants to convict her teacher, William Hale, although all the evidence against him is circumstantial. Enlisting the town's leading journalist, William Brock, Griffin and Brock work together to use his reporting to rile the public up in a craze of prejudice and hatred towards Hale before his trial even begins. The press sells a prejudice angle on the story, not and objective, truthful one, in order to get the conviction they want. Griffin forces witnesses to lie on the stand to make sure Hale is found guilty. When he is, and sentenced to death, the governor commutes his sentence to life in prison, but the townspeople, who have become enraged by this take matters into their own hands and kill Hale themselves. In the final scene of the film, Hale's wife confronts Griffin and Brock accusing them of twisting the investigation to fit their needs and wants, causing at least Brock to reflect on what they have done.

The journalist in the film, Brock, is given unrestricted access to Hale's home, able to take evidence from his house to use in his reporting without alerting the investigators. When it first breaks that a girl has been murdered, Brock is interviewing some of the girl's classmates outside of the building, with a mob of people around them. He judges Hale off of one quick interaction outside the building the girl was killed in, and because Hale is in a hurry and cannot stand around to answer questions, that makes him the prime suspect in Brock's eyes. Brock's reporting focuses on making Hale the only suspect, trying to get the public to hate him enough to force a conviction. During the trial, Brock gives updates each day on the events that happened in the courtroom, but with a large bias in the District Attorney’s favor. His reporting got the public so crazed that they attacked the train transporting Hale to prison and killed him because they believed what they had been told in the paper and on the radio each day of the trial.