They Made Me a Criminal (1939)

(On Cable TV, May 2022) You won’t find that many drama films in director Busby Berkeley’s filmography – the man who defined kaleidoscopic dance routines in the 1930s was best used in musicals and light-hearted fare, but by 1939 his time at Warner Brothers was nearly up, and movie musicals were on the way out. As a result, he ended up directing drama They Made Me a Criminal in which a boxer, convinced he’d killed a man, goes in self-exile in the desert — where he finds redemption, romance, and purpose. It’s not that much of a plot (and this being before noir’s heyday, there’s a surprising restraint in dwelling on the fatalism of the character’s fate) but the film moves effectively even when it’s not that memorable. They Made Me a Criminal is perhaps more interesting behind the scenes as a film of beginnings and endings – an ending for Berkeley, who would move to MGM and find renewed success in the new glossy colour musicals that were about to define the studio’s glory days; and beginnings for the Dead End Kids that litter this film, since they would go on to become the East Side Kids and then the Bowery Boys. (Although this film won’t make converts to their brand of humour and malapropisms.)  There are many, many ways in which this film could have been better – leaning on the grimness of the story or conversely highlighting its humanistic aspect, or taking out the insufferable kids – but They Made Me a Criminal is not that unpleasant to watch. John Garfield gives plenty of dramatic energy to a role that could have been underwritten, and the time spent in the desert marks a change of pace if you’re jaded about the urban landscapes of 1930s Warners crime movies.