Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

THE SAGA OF AMERICA'S DIRTY FACED KIDS... AND THE BREAKS THAT LIFE WON'T GIVE THEM!

Coppers and crooks. Sweet angels and dirty rats. Dames, wise-guys, guns that never need reloading and crime waves signified by spinning newspaper headlines. Welcome to the era of the classic gangster picture. Along with westerns, these were morality tales set to show right from wrong, and they were the bread and butter of the moviegoer of the 30s and 40s. From these films, we got some of the greats, like Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and, of course, James Cagney. Cagney would achieve great success and acclaim in these kind of pictures, with one of his most enduring pictures being today’s film, Angels with Dirty Faces.

Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien) were two tough kids who grew up together in the toughest part of New York before each of them goes their separate ways: Rocky gets sent to reform school, where he learns how to be a first class criminal; Jerry goes straight and becomes a priest, working with kids who, like he and Rocky, could end up on either side of the law. Years later, a fresh out of jail Rocky is looking for a safe place to stay until he can resume his old criminal career, which Jerry, for the sake of the boys, would rather he didn’t do.

As I said before, these kinds of films were meant as simple morality tales, whereby the bad guy says bad things, commits crimes and gets gunned down for it in the final reel. This was largely because of the Motion Picture Production Code of the time, known more colloquially as the Hays Code, named for Hollywood’s chief censor, Will Hays. According to this code, amongst many other rules dictating the morals of film, criminals could not be seen to profit or get away with any crimes. It was pretty much part of the dictate that they had to die. What really separates Angels with Dirty Faces from the other gangster pictures of the time is that the script actually takes a look at the reason for this rule: the influence of the wealthy gangster on the impoverished and impressionable youth. The film actually considers the tough reality of getting kids to play by the rules when they’re shown that not doing so will yield better results. This is the dilemma that gets openly addressed in the film, like so:

Jerry: What earthly good is it for me to teach that honesty is the best policy

when all around they see that dishonesty is a better policy? That the hoodlum

and the gangster is looked up to with the same respect as the successful

businessman or the popular hero? You and the Fraziers and the Keefers and all

the rest of those rotten politicians you’ve got in the palm of your hand. Yes,

and you’ve got my boys, too. Whatever I teach them, you... you show me up.

You show them the easiest way - the quickest way is with a racket or a gun.

Rocky: Well, it’s so, ain’t it?

Jerry: Yes, it’s so... God help us.

Therein lies the heart of the whole film. Considering the typical tactic of the day was to simply say ‘if you keep committing crimes, someone’s going to put a stop to you’, this is a far more eloquent and lasting consideration of the difficulty of trying to be moral in an admittedly amoral world. It also knows the importance of a man’s reputation as something of significant value. Rocky gets to be who is because people have heard of him, the things he’s done. It’s exactly why the kids look up to him, his reputation always precedes him. So, it knows full well the sheer magnitude of Jerry’s last request of Rocky, before he gets led to the electric chair, is that Rocky break down and go out like a coward, screaming and crying. It’s the only way Jerry can look out for the kid’s in his care, though it clearly kills him to ask it. Rocky flat out refuses to do so, since his last moments will be what define him. He doesn’t want to cheapen his reputation at the last hurdle. He wants to make those boys proud of him. It’s a genuinely tough decision for him to make.

Michael Curtiz does give some solid direction in the film, with the tone slowly and steadily becoming genuinely darker and more serious in the closing moments. It takes real skill to be able to have such deliberate control over proceedings like this, and Curtiz definitely has it. Also, the manner in which they convey Rocky’s criminal rise from his reform school beginnings to the man he becomes, through a montage of prison enlistment forms and criminal deeds, is very well handled, economical and articulate. Depending on your viewpoint, he may occasionally oversell some moments, like the final shot of the boys in the hideout and the music in the background. It’s not exactly subtle, but I think it still works. Also, the sense of space is somewhat thrown off at the beginning of Rocky’s last big shootout, but you get over it quickly.

There are some performances worth talking about in the film, before we get to the might of James Cagney. Frankie Burke, who plays Rocky as a young boy, does very well effectively playing a young Cagney. Humphrey Bogart, here as Frazier, is on decent form. It’s far removed from the likes of his more famous tough-guy personas, like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and Rick Blaine. He’s a shifty, cowardly swine. It’s actually a little disconcerting to watch him like this after seeing how great he was in The Maltese Falcon, but that role wouldn’t come until three years after Angels with Dirty Faces, so it worked a bit better then. Pat O’Brien is solid as Jerry. Even though he’s now a priest trying to set a good example for the kids and protect them from bad, you still see the love he has for his old friend Rocky. O’Brien’s face shows Jerry’s conflict well, always catching himself somewhere between a disapproving frown and the warm smile. The finely underplayed moment as he watches his friend walk towards the chair is really quite affecting. Ann Sheridan is pretty and does well for herself, but the role isn’t terribly well handled in the script. She serves to be the one who ends up being taken in by Rocky’s charms and then she’s just forgotten about. After a single scene of teary-eyed pleading with Jerry, she……

Let’s talk about the Dead End Kids, the gaggle of cherub-faced little goons that the title refers to. These were a young bunch of actors from New York that got their name when they appeared in a play called Dead End, cast because they were able to bring that street-wise attitude to the show. Amongst the many that saw the play were producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler, who decided to turn the play into a film and keep the same cast. The Dead End Kids were flown to Hollywood and signed to two-year contracts, with the film being released in 1937. Goldwyn clearly regretted his decision, because the Dead End Kids were monsters who ran riot around the studio destroying property and messing with other actors constantly. Goldwyn sold their contract to Warner Brothers, which is how they ended up in Angels with Dirty Faces. The change in studio did nothing to change their ways. They continued to cause mayhem, breaking things and throwing other actors off by constantly ad-libbing. There’s even a story where they backed Humphrey Bogart into a corner and stole his trousers. They stole Humphrey Bogart's trousers! However, it was James Cagney that set them straight, in a typically Cagney fashion. The first time one of the kids threw an ad-lib at him, Cagney broke character and hit the kid square in the face. They behaved themselves from then on. That’s kind of what makes the basketball scene so great. The way Rocky kept a lid on the gang’s bad play was pretty much how Cagney kept a lid on the gang’s offscreen antics. God, James Cagney was awesome.

In this film, James Cagney is superb. It’s actually kind of difficult to appreciate just how good Cagney really is as Rocky Sullivan nowadays. People haven’t really seen his films, like ‘G’ Men or The Roaring Twenties or Yankee Doodle Dandy or Love Me or Leave Me or the superb White Heat. All people have to go on now is the impressions and imitations of Cagney that others have been doing for years, mainly based on his performance in Angels with Dirty Faces, so the power has been somewhat diluted. It's seen more as a thing of comedy now. This is a real shame, because it makes me think that Cagney is already starting to be lost to the world, which I find very disheartening. However, believe you me, Cagney is incredible in this film. It’s in the way he talks through viciously bared teeth, how he stares harshly at whoever he’s talking to, how he holds his whole body as forward as possible. This guy seems physically incapable backing down. All through the film, he’s not someone to be messed with. Despite this, Rocky does have some charm to him. Like most career criminals, he can be a friendly face to people he liked, but you’d still rather not go near him. There’s even times when you like him, like when he’s teaching the kids to play basketball by the rules, but he’s still the same fierce individual he’s always been. Cagney captures all of this wonderfully, setting up a character so solid, but so utterly rotten that you hope that he changes, but can’t ever fully believe that he will.

Angels with Dirty Faces is a great picture and still packs an emotional punch to its ending. The script is great and Curtiz’s direction is well controlled, allowing the film to go from being something relatively light to become something darker and with real weight behind it. Performances are good throughout, with a good deal of credit going to Pat O’Brien, but it’s Cagney’s film here, showing exactly why he was such a draw back in the day and why more people should see his movies.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

THE BEST LOVED BANDIT OF ALL TIME!

Clearly, Hollywood loves Robin Hood. He’s the perfect hero for them. He’s dashing, handsome, adventurous, brave and noble, a man of daring and action… he’s a hero for all ages. As such, they tend to revisit his story quite often. Every now and then, they tweak the formula a bit, like the Rat Pack gangster comedy Robin and the 7 Hoods, but they always comes back to the swash-buckling origins of knights and duels and chivalry and all that other stuff. One of the earliest cracks at that chestnut was the 1938 Warner Bros. classic The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

When King Richard (Ian Hunter) is off leading the way in the Crusades, his brother Prince John (Claude Rains) and his court begin oppressing the masses in his absence. From this oppression comes Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), a Saxon lord, who chooses to fight back as the outlaw leader of a rebel army.

It should be understood from the outset that, at the time of writing, The Adventures of Robin Hood is 73 years old. Times have changed, standards have changed, and there’s been dozens of versions of this story attempted in that time. Many have tried to adopt a more realistic approach to the material, even going so far as to locate it in as specific a time period as possible. As such, to a modern audience watching this now, there is bound to be a slight dimming of the light. Nevertheless, you do try to take things on their own terms, taking into consideration what audiences were like back then and what they wanted from a swash-buckling adventure film.

Still, there are still elements of the picture that have aged rather poorly in light of more modern production techniques. One of Robin Hood’s biggest and most heralded of attributes is the fight scenes, particularly the final swordfight between Robin and Guy of Gisbourne. These scenes were a major selling point of the film and perhaps the primary reason it was so successful. They do feel authentic and visceral in a sense, however that is somewhat short-circuited by the fact that they were sped up slightly to give them a faster, more exciting pace. Back in 1938, audiences may not have been particularly aware of this (or maybe they were, but didn’t care), but to a modern viewer, this is likely to stand out as more comical than exciting. Further to this, the broader acting style can seem peculiar, if not a bit distracting. This is not a fault to be levelled at this film specifically, though. This was the style of many adventure pictures at the time, with everything being bigger and grander, so the performances simply followed suit. There are also moments of clumsy editing and awkward direction, but again some of this was a product of the standards of the time. Though, some of it wasn’t and it actually was just a clumsy edit.

However, all of this is not say that there is nothing for modern audiences to enjoy here. There are many technical aspects that continue to hold up rather well, and even certain story points that seem to outstrip more contemporary tellings of the Robin Hood tale. Firstly, the stunt work is still something to behold. Remember, this was back in the day when stuntmen were asked to do some really dangerous stuff with nothing to protect them but a good duck-and-roll. As such, watching them make 20ft leaps and actually go at each other with unguarded swords (by request of director Michael Curtiz) is still amazing. Also, men were actually shot with arrows during this film, and not by accident either. They were given some padding and $150 for every arrow that hit them. That’s ballsy.

The music in this film is also a great triumph. Austrian opera composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold was unsure as to whether or not to take the job, but when he learned that Hitler was about to invade his home country, he opted to take the job that kept him in the States. What he produced was the kind of joyously stirring, fanfare-driven musical underscore that became the standard that all such music would be measured against. It even got him an Oscar.

Some of the script actually manages to hold up really well, too. One of the more annoying facets of the film is that, in order to maintain the high spirits of the piece, characters will laugh heartily and often, regardless of whether what has just been said was funny or not. However, some moments are still kind of worth it. When Robin Hood introduces Friar Tuck to Will Scarlett for the first time, he tells Will, “He’s one of us.” Noticing Friar Tuck’s ample gut, he responds, “One of us? He looks like three of us.” Now, for all the impact that Will Scarlett makes in this film, you could almost cut him completely out, but that right there is a quality joke. There’s also some good moments of summing a character up in only a couple of lines, so it is, at times, wonderfully economical. For example, when Robin first meets Gisbourne and stops him from killing a man for speaking out of turn, Robin asks him, “Come now, Sir Guy. You would not kill a man for telling the truth, would you?” Gisbourne responds, “If it amused me, yes.” That’s pretty sinister, and you absolutely understand what kind of man he is from that one line.

Further to the script is the depiction of Robin Hood himself, which is actually rather interesting. As the Robin Hood story has been told over and over again, he has become more humble in his position as leader of his rebel army, but he has also been given a more personal stake in the fight. For example, in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, his father is murdered by the Sheriff of Nottingham, and so his quest is just as much about revenge as it is about justice, if not more so. Also, in Ridley Scott’s take on the legend, Robin is seen to be, albeit hesitantly, trying to fulfil the promise of a sort of Free Republic that his father had envisioned. With the Robin Hood of this film, however, his actions are actually more pure and decent than that, if more simplistic. Robin Hood fights for the oppressed because, well, he doesn’t like oppression. He has no real personal stake in this cause, no reason to care about the plight of the people. He chooses to fight because it’s the right thing to do and that’s reason enough for him.

Even then, there’s still a hint of something else in there. A secondary concern that really just affects the manner of the action rather than the decision to act itself, and it’s something that the character has lost as time has gone on. Here, Robin Hood is kind of a badass. Not to say that others aren’t, but it seems most noticeable here somehow. Can you imagine Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe swaggering into Prince John’s banquet hall, carrying on his back the dead deer that he just used to beat the hell out of the guards outside? It doesn’t quite fit with them, but it totally fits with Errol Flynn. Although overall, it’s a rather flamboyant performance, and the man himself said he found the role a bit dull, there’s still an enjoyable kind of laconic smugness about him. One of the great lines of the film comes from this very banquet scene. Robin has just finished telling all in attendance why he believes Prince John to be a threat to the country, and Lady Marian speaks up, “Why, you speak treason!” Robin turns to her, smiles and says, “Fluently.” It’s this kind of dry, cool wit that would eventually give us the likes of John McClane.

Perhaps its impact upon modern audiences will not be as strong as it was back in 1938, and there are elements that will seem a little foolish with the passing of time, but The Adventures of Robin Hood still has some greatness to it. It was then, and remains to this day, one for the unabashed child in everyone. It’s a simple tale, but told with great verve and gusto and still holds onto some interesting points to this day. You may not understand what all the fuss is about yourself, but if you’ve got a five-year old, they’ll tell you about it after they’ve watched it.