#222: Angels with Dirty Faces
It’s not the movie from Home Alone, but it’s pretty good
This review was originally posted to Twitter on January 31st, 2020.
Initial release: November 26, 1938
Director: Michael Curtiz
James Cagney. The bad boy of the 1930s. Few actors represent a very specific type of character like Cagney did the streetwise, fast-talking gangster, full of quippy lines and violence, and no less so in Angels with Dirty Faces, Michael Curtiz’s iconic gangster flick.
In the early 1920s, a couple of poor kids living in New York City, Rocky and Jerry, are caught breaking into train cars. While Jerry gets away, Rocky is caught, and spends the next fifteen years in and out of jail, coming out the other end a hardened criminal. Jerry, meanwhile, is now a priest, ministering to a crumbling neighborhood in depression-era New York, especially the legion of kids who roam the streets with few prospects and fewer scruples. He’s having trouble reaching these kids and is unsure what to do about it. When rocky returns to his old neighborhood, he’s got a fat stack of headlines with his name in them, and he’s a hero to delinquent kids everywhere, which is exactly what worries Jerry as Rocky worms his way into the local criminal organization and “mentors” the neighborhood kids.
This is one of those quintessential gangster movies from an actor who’s made a lot of such films. Cagney is all swagger and bravado; he’s far smarter than he looks, and full of catchphrases (like the famous greeting “what do you hear, what do you say?”) Opposite him is Pat O’Brien as Jerry, whose gentle, fatherly persona does little to hide the street kid he used to be, even going so far as to throw a punch to a guy who honestly was kind of asking for it. He’s the perfect foil to Rocky’s tough guy gangster. And the two are best of friends. In between is Ann Sheridan as Laury, a girl that Rocky and Jerry used to tease as kids but grew up to be quite the looker, and who becomes Rocky’s love interest. Also in this film is Humphrey Bogart, another famous movie tough guy, this time as a sleazy lawyer for the mob. Alongside them are the “Dead End Kids,” a troupe of child stars who frequently appeared in films like this as delinquent little bastards. Here they’re the neighborhood kids who idolize Rocky and tend to roll their eyes at Jerry’s attempts to get through to them.
Curtiz has put together a smart film with elements of comedy but also a surprisingly violent finale by late thirties standards as Rocky starts a sudden shootout with the gang bosses he has a tenuous hold over. The body count at the end is quite something. While interior scenes tend to be simply shot, Curtiz gets creative with exterior shots, especially a brilliant sweep to establish nNew York in the 1920s and which he then repeats for the late 1930s. Lighting is equally simple, until he surprises you with some chiascouro at the end. It’s really Cagney and O’Brien who carry this film; Laury is largely a side character, and while the Dead End Kids clearly have a routine down with elements of slapstick, by the end of the film it’s clear they’re meant to be the audience stand-in.
Thanks to the Hays Code, Cagney’s gangster characters are always fated to die as a means of avoiding “glorifying” criminality. The same thing happens here, but in this case, the Dead End Kids who idolize Rocky are the recipients of the message: “don’t be like Rocky.” Nevertheless, this is still a seminal work in gangster film, proving influential on everything from Home Alone (the film’s child hero Kevin at one point watches Angels with Filthy Souls, a gangster movie-within-a-movie parodying the title) to Batman: the Animated Series (the classic episode “It’s Never Too Late,” a personal favorite of mine.) Despite workmanlike direction, this is a great film with a snappy script, some great acting on Cagney and O’Brien’s part, and a thrilling finale that embodies everything that drew people to these flicks — to watch James Cagney shoot people, moral messaging be damned.
