James Cagney

Here Comes the Navy (1934)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Clearly, Here Comes the Navy could not have been made at any other time than 1933-1934, for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. From a factual perspective, the film is about a young man enlisting to be a sailor, and serving both on the USS Arizona (destroyed in 1941 during the bomb attack on Pearl Harbor) and then on the dirigible USS Macon (destroyed in 1935 by an accident, bringing an end to the fleet of US Navy rigid dirigibles). For a thematic perspective, we also have a man enlisting for the wrong reasons (romantic revenge!), serving poorly, openly contemplating quitting, and maintaining a somewhat disrespectful attitude toward the service—that kind of script would not have flown during the Production Code years, or the moment the United States contemplated World War II, and especially not when Hollywood decided to become a pure propaganda effort for the American war machine. But since Here Comes the Navy was made just in time, we are left with this somewhat spirited comedy in which James Cagney plays a pugnacious suitor who gets in trouble with a navy officer and, out of spite, joins the service to annoy him and (later) date his sister. This eventually leads him to a court martial, and then two incidents in which his valour is rewarded. All of this was completed with the full cooperation of the Navy, meaning that we get some fanciful but still fascinating look at the operations of a now-sunk warship, and a now-equally sunk dirigible in their heyday. Beyond the historical documentation factor, Cagney is occasionally very amusing in the lead, while Gloria Stuart (yes, that Titanic Gloria Stuart) makes for a bland but effective female lead. Here Comes the Navy is not that funny, but it is amiable and navigates an interesting line between being cynical about the service and upbeat about it. It’s a Pre-Code film in non-obvious ways: not so much given to racy themes, but far more irreverent than you’d expect from something that, at times, does look like the propaganda films of the early 1940s.

“G” Men (1935)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2020) There’s a really interesting context to “G” Men that gives an added dimension to what could otherwise be dismissed as blunt pro-police propaganda, and it’s really no accident if this is a film from exactly 1935. At the time, producing studio Warner Brothers was far better known as a purveyor of gangster pictures, many of them taking a hypocritical approach to crime by glorifying the criminal… before ensuring that he was perfunctorily punished for his crimes right before the end credits. But this ended up being a factor in the drive to rein in Hollywood with an expansive Production Code of what could be shown on-screen—a code that went into effect in 1934, putting an end to the freewheeling Pre-Code era and posing a specific problem for Warner Brothers, as their best-known product was directly threatened. One of their solutions was to flip the script around and make policemen the heroes catching the criminals, and that brings us squarely to “G” Men, a film following an incorruptible young man (played by the roguish James Cagney, hilariously enough) as he joins the then-rather-newly named FBI to take down an organized crime boss. There’s a little bit of training, romance and action in the following scenes, as the film starts putting together the building blocks of the FBI’s reputation as a fearsome federal agency (a reputation that FBI chief Hoover would capitalize upon—indeed, the most commonly shown version of “G” Men is the 1949 re-release with an even blunter framing device introducing it as a training film for recruits. I can’t quite call “G” Men a good film—it plays in now-obvious clichés, outright propaganda and very familiar plot elements—but it’s certainly a fascinating illustration of the immediate impact that the Hays Code had on Hollywood… and the ever-creative solutions that studio executives will find to deliver more or less the same thing as per the tastes of the day.

One, Two, Three (1961)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, July 2020) The legendary Billy Wilder wrote and directed so many great films that it’s easy to forget about even his second-tier efforts, and so it took me a curiously long time to get to watch One, Two, Three. A comedy set in Berlin that heavily plays with the Cold War obsessions of the time, it also lets James Cagney have one of his last roles be a comic showpiece as a Coca-Cola executive dealing with Soviet contacts and the flighty daughter of an influential superior. As usual for Wilder movie, the screenwriting is front and centre, with Cagney spitting dialogue at a blistering pace as a fast-thinking professional used to get his way even under adverse circumstances. The comedy gets crazier and crazier, picking elements from Wilder’s own Ninotchka and bringing them forward to a newly-fractured Berlin stuck between communists and capitalists. One, Two, Three is very much a fascinating time capsule of its era, because it seems able to laugh contemporarily about things that you think would have been best dealt with retrospectively as a period piece. The film does get funnier as it goes on, and Cagney keeps his maniac pacing from beginning to end. There’s quite a bit of mordant cynical humour from Wilder’s pen, but it all leads to a nice wrap-up. For Wilder, One, Two, Three will always be overshadowed by a filmography that includes classics such as Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot, but it’s a very enjoyable film nonetheless.

Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(YouTube Streaming, April 2020) If you’re looking for a 1930s gangster movie, you could do much worse than Angels with Dirty Faces, a street-level crime thriller set in Manhattan that showcases no less than James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in a plot that blends criminals, priests, kids, lawyers and fifteen years’ worth of resentment. Unusually enough, the film severely undermines the image of its lead gangster is the most effective way possible—by having him beg for mercy at the moment of his execution, showing just how much of a coward he truly is. Cagney has a great iconic role here, and he doesn’t let anyone forget it. Meanwhile, Bogart is in a stranger position: While the role is good and the Bogartian speech patterns are there, he here plays a white-collar scoundrel, underdeveloped when compared to his later roles. Meryn Leroy directs the film with sharpness and precision, whether it’s setting up a complex street scene, or fluently going over years of events through newspaper headlines and documents. The result is quite a good proto-noir film, especially when measured against similar movies of the time.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Two things help The Roaring Twenties distinguish itself from other late-1930s crime dramas. The most superficial one is having both Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney in the same film, something that only happened three times — all within 1938–1939, as Warner Brothers was still establishing the limits of the ascendant Bogart’s screen persona. The more interesting aspect is contextual—this was Warner’s attempt to recapture some of their glory days of early-1930s gangster movies. To this end, the script takes a look back at the 1920s through a very sensationalistic lens: it posits a decade made of WWI veterans turning to crime in an attempt to climb up the economic ladder, something made easier than usual by Prohibition and its illicit opportunities. (There’s a contrast to be made here with The Best Years of Our Lives, or perhaps even the original Ocean’s Eleven.) This historical material is reshaped in somewhat classic late-1930s gangster film material, an instant homage from that era’s perspective that is lost on twenty-first century viewers. Fittingly for a Production Code film (one handicap that early-1930s gangster film didn’t have to contend with), crime doesn’t pay all the way to the melodramatic end. The Roaring Twenties is a pretty good film, no matter whether you care all that much about the Bogart/Cagney reunion—veteran director Raoul Walsh delivers what audiences then or now expect, and is easy to watch from beginning to end. Meanwhile, as I sit at home in COVID lockdown, I wonder how they’ll eventually nickname these just-beginning twenty-twenties.

The Crowd Roars (1932)

The Crowd Roars (1932)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2019) There’s a blend of familiarity and strangeness at play in The Crowd Roars that I find quite interesting. On the familiar side, this is a racing film, and it’s directed by Howard Hawks. You get much of what we’ve come to expect from both Hawks (action, tough men and articulate women) and from car racing films. The dramatic arc is intensely melodramatic, but we know where we are and there aren’t many surprises along the way. But there’s an alien quality to The Crowd Roars that makes it interesting as well. As one of the first sound films to look at auto racing, it reflects the rougher, sometimes fatal nature of such events—different cars, different attitudes toward accidents as well. It’s clear that the film comes from a Pre-Code time when the grammar of racing sequences was still being defined—there’s some surprisingly good racing footage here, as well as some jarring rear-projection work that does not do any favours to the actors. James Cagney stars as a borderline-unlikable protagonist, but he doesn’t quite fit the role and isn’t as intense here as other films of the era. Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell are more interesting as the romantic interests (spurned by the men!)  Hawks’ work here is decent but not overly impressive: he gets the importance of thrilling audiences, but his interest in the film doesn’t seem to extend to the dramatic moments. The Crowd Roar is not an essential film—in many ways, it feels like the kind of material that Warner Brothers churned out by obligation at the time. But it does present an interesting glimpse into racing at the dawn of the 1930s, perhaps the best we have captured on film. Given this, it may be worth a particular look for those interested in cars and their portrayal in Hollywood history.

Mister Roberts (1955)

Mister Roberts (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2019) There’s a very odd quality to Mister Roberts that makes itself known early on, as this “war movie” remains behind the front lines, spending its time with the crew of a supply ship that never gets close to the front. The forced comedy of the first few scenes feels amazingly close to the anarchic spirit of 1970’s MASH at times, with sailor goofing off in between their war effort, characters intentionally shirking their duties (most notably Jack Lemmon) and the title character (Henry Fonda) trying to shield his crew from an irascible captain (James Cagney). The main cast is intriguing, but the rhythm of the film feels forced, making jokes that remain unfunny and multiplying the episodes that don’t amount to much. The material is there for an examination of men at-war-but-not-at-war, but Mister Roberts, perhaps shackled by source material (it was first a novel and then a Broadway play), seems split between rambling dialogues, incongruous voiceovers and mildly annoying characters. It does feel like a film out of time, more at ease in the anti-war movies of the 1970s than the still-triumphant mood of 1950s WW2 films. (I’m actually amazed that the film got the full cooperation of the US Navy for location shooting.)  Mister Roberts’ plot does get better as the film advances, but it leads to a tragic conclusion that feels at odds with the rest of the film.

The Public Enemy (1932)

The Public Enemy (1932)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) At times, it can be fascinating to go back in history to see how the modern shape of cinema came together—how the elements we now take for granted were assembled over decades of small refinements and audience reactions to various experiments. It’s obvious that The Public Enemy is a formative work of crime movies—it’s often mentioned in histories of the genre, and even casual cinephiles are likely to have encountered critical commentary about James Cagney’s prominence in gangster movies of the 1930s. The Public Enemy is framed as a semi-realistic depiction of gangster activity at a time when America was still hungover from Prohibition and pre-Code cinema was trying to figure out the balance between good taste and audience thrills. As such, it’s definitely intriguing—you can see when the filmmakers are trying to get a rise out of the audience (hence the domestic abuse scene featuring a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face, still as shocking now as it was then), but also how they ensured that the criminals repented and were punished for their actions. This being said, it hasn’t always aged particularly well, even though its filmmaking techniques were decent for the time and director William A. Wellman used a number of unusual shots. It’s not the film’s fault—it’s that we’re used now to what was novel and exciting then. If you’re watching The Public Enemy for entertainment rather than cinema history, don’t be surprised to find it a tepid viewing at best, and at worst kind of dull.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2019) I’m done apologizing for the way I can’t process Shakespearian dialogue. Fortunately, there’s enough in the 1930s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to get us into a surprisingly detailed early example of a fantasy film. As my attention wandered from the dialogue and plot, I was left to admire nearly everything else: The great sets and costumes, as well as the vivid imagination on display. Remove Shakespeare’s name from the credits, and there’s still enough here to make this a modest masterpiece of early fantasy filmmaking. Clearly, the filmmakers saw in Shakespeare the license to go wild (comparatively speaking) in terms of fantastic creatures, wondrous realism and other tropes of the genre what would be developed decades later. If tracing the evolution of fantasy moviemaking isn’t your thing, then maybe you’d be interested in a very early role for Mickey Rooney, or seeing Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney once more. Still, I’m more appreciative of the fantasy filmmaking aspect: there weren’t that many big-budget fantasy movies at that time, and this one fills an early slot in the development of the subgenre.

White Heat (1949)

White Heat (1949)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2018) Most reviews boil down to reasons why viewers would want to see a film (or not) and trying to comment on older movies usually filters that answer through a contemporary perspective: what would viewers enjoy (or not) from this film considering today’s perspective? For White Heat, the three main points are; a solid crime story, interesting period detail and James Cagney. White Heat presents the last years of a career criminal, as he gets arrested, goes to prison, escapes and hatches a new plan. The finale is explosive, with “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” still a reference for movie buffs. Still, the story itself is well crafted and Cagney’s performance is truly enjoyable. The psychodynamics of his character’s attachment to his mom is still rich fodder for crime movie inspiration, along with some femme fatale material, a police informer, a gripping prison mess hall scene and a steadily engrossing story. Nearly seventy years later, there is also a bit of fascination in seeing White Heat take on techno-thriller plot devices, notably in explaining the minutia of radio tracking. It all amounts to a solid and satisfying crime thriller that holds up even today.

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2017) I really wasn’t expecting much from Yankee Doodle Dandy other than checking off a list of classic movies I should see, so imagine my surprise when I started to be honestly engaged in the film. Initially drawn in by the time-capsule aspect of the film (as a 1942 framing device leads us to late 1800s vaudeville, and then the birth of Hollywood musicals), I really started enjoying myself in-between the honestly funny comic routines inspired by state work and the birth of American musical movies. Academy Award-winner James Cagney (looking like a young Anthony Hopkins?) shows some serious skills in giving life to actor/composer/dancer George M. Cohan through some sixty-some years. By the time the film ends, we’ve been given front-row seats to a highly dramatized depiction of the evolution of American entertainment from theatre to movies, as well as a full biography ending with a striking piece of palatable pro-American patriotism both in topic matter and presentation. The re-creation of lavish stage spectacles is striking, many of the tunes are toe-tapping good and the film remains sporadically very funny even now. Add to that some directorial flourishes from Michael Curtiz (most notably a sequence charting the evolution of Cohan’s Broadway shows) and you’ve got the makings of an unexpected great movie that has appreciated in the seventy-five years since its release. I’ve been watching more older movies lately, and Yankee Doodle Dandy is the kind of happy discovery that will keep me going deeper into the archives.