This was directed by Raoul Walsh and included many of the Warner Brothers stalwarts. You'll recognize many familiar faces if you're an aficionado of the genre. Rip-roaring, no-nonsense stuff, it's basically organized around three stories: (1) Cagney's rise from unemployed ex-soldier to the top of the bootlegger heap and back again; (2) the love quadrangle involving Cagney, Gladys George as the soft-hearted blowzy Panama Smith, Priscilla Lane as the "good girl", and Jeffrey Lynn as the lawyer; and (3) the friendship of Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Jeffrey Lynn in the trenches, turning into a wary partnership, the eventual defection of Lynn, the ruination of Cagney, and the death by natural causes (three bullets) of treacherous, greedy, petty Bogart. According to Mark Hellinger's story, the end of prohibition by Franklin Delano Roosevelt put an end to the gangsters. Zealous moralists, take note. The answer CAN be found in the bottom of a glass.
As far as the movie is concerned, there's nothing much not to like. You may have seen it before, sections of it, in one guise or another. Citizen Kane boosted his girl friend's opera career, didn't he? And as a matter of fact Cagney himself boosted Ruth Etting (Doris Day) in "Love Me or Leave Me." And this was far from the first shootout Cagney had with treacherous ex-colleagues -- or the last, for that matter. But they're all stitched neatly together here. It should be seen if for no other reason than that it's an almost perfect exemplar of Warner's 1930s gangster movies. And it has a famous last line too -- "He used to be a big shot," says Panama Smith over Cagney's corpse. Granted, it's not, "Good-night, sweet prince, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." It's a classic line only because Walsh's direction and Gladys George's reading make it so.
I rather enjoyed it. There is Priscilla Lane's plain vanilla ice-cream beauty, Bogart's horrifying overacting when he's shot, Gladys George's softly knowing brittleness, Jeffrey Lynn's unimaginative, bourgeois impulses, and above all, James Cagney's acting. He's pretty good. And good at whatever emotional state he's projecting, from doomed resignation to cocky superiority. And he's outstanding after he falls from grace and winds up a seedy bum, haunting saloons and living in hovels that offer rooms for 15 cents a night. He realizes that his time has run out just as he's leaving Flannagan's Saloon, drunk, and for some reason he pauses at the piano on his way out, stares down at a half-empty glass of beer, and smiles to himself, both with sadness and relief. The shot is held for a while too. And it's not strictly functional -- a small but masterly gloss on Cagney's character development.
Well worth seeing.
As far as the movie is concerned, there's nothing much not to like. You may have seen it before, sections of it, in one guise or another. Citizen Kane boosted his girl friend's opera career, didn't he? And as a matter of fact Cagney himself boosted Ruth Etting (Doris Day) in "Love Me or Leave Me." And this was far from the first shootout Cagney had with treacherous ex-colleagues -- or the last, for that matter. But they're all stitched neatly together here. It should be seen if for no other reason than that it's an almost perfect exemplar of Warner's 1930s gangster movies. And it has a famous last line too -- "He used to be a big shot," says Panama Smith over Cagney's corpse. Granted, it's not, "Good-night, sweet prince, flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." It's a classic line only because Walsh's direction and Gladys George's reading make it so.
I rather enjoyed it. There is Priscilla Lane's plain vanilla ice-cream beauty, Bogart's horrifying overacting when he's shot, Gladys George's softly knowing brittleness, Jeffrey Lynn's unimaginative, bourgeois impulses, and above all, James Cagney's acting. He's pretty good. And good at whatever emotional state he's projecting, from doomed resignation to cocky superiority. And he's outstanding after he falls from grace and winds up a seedy bum, haunting saloons and living in hovels that offer rooms for 15 cents a night. He realizes that his time has run out just as he's leaving Flannagan's Saloon, drunk, and for some reason he pauses at the piano on his way out, stares down at a half-empty glass of beer, and smiles to himself, both with sadness and relief. The shot is held for a while too. And it's not strictly functional -- a small but masterly gloss on Cagney's character development.
Well worth seeing.