Angels With Dirty Faces
Studio: Warner Archive
Dec 26, 2021 Web Exclusive
1938 was a banner year for director Michael Curtiz. He released five films in five different genres, three of which were hits and two of which - The Adventures of Robin Hood and Four Daughters - were nominated for Best Picture. Although he was still several years from the peak of his success - that would be directing Casablanca - by 1938, Curtiz had established himself as one of the most prolific filmmakers in the Warner Bros. machine. The studio was known for establishing the gangster genre in the early 1930s with films like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, but the rise of the Hayes Code in 1934 had put a damper on films featuring ruthless, violent criminals. James Cagney made his name playing tough hoodlums in films like The Public Enemy, but had since branched out into other roles like comedies, war films and even Shakespeare adaptations. Angels With Dirty Faces - which, in addition to being a hit, garnered Oscar nominations for both Cagney and Curtiz - was seen as something of a return to form for Cagney.
In Rocky Sullivan, a street kid hardened by reform school into a big-time gangster, Cagney found that character that allowed him to play perhaps the most “James Cagney” role of his career. A swaggering smart-aleck with a handy catchphrase - “Whaddya hear, whaddya say?” - and a habit of compulsively squaring his shoulders, Sullivan is the epitome of the good-natured thug archetype that Cagney had been cultivating onscreen for almost a decade. Rather than focus on the well-worn criminal exploits that defined earlier gangster films, Angels With Dirty Faces takes a more sociological perspective on the gangster character. The film opens with a younger version of Rocky - played by actor Frankie Burke doing a Cagney impression so convincing its hard to believe Cagney’s voice wasn’t dubbed over his performance - and his best friend Jerry robbing fountain pens from a boxcar. Jerry just barely escapes the police while Rocky is carted off to reform school. Fifteen years later, Rocky has become one of the biggest gangsters in New York while Jerry has become a priest dedicated to working with teens in their old neighborhood.
The film makes much of the fact that Rocky and Jerry’s fates could have easily been swapped if Jerry had been caught rather than Rocky. And in Jerry’s young charges, we see the next generation of potential Rockys, played by the Dead End Kids. The Dead End Kids were extremely popular in the late 30s, a collection of half a dozen teen actors who played variations on the same characters in a variety of crime dramas and comedies; think the Little Rascals but as juvenile delinquents. Their slang-ridden banter and posturing feels like it would have been corny even by the standards of the time, but their chemistry with Cagney feels genuine. Carrying the emotional weight of the film is the relationship between Rocky and Jerry, the latter played by Pat O’Brien, who was close friends with Cagney offscreen. The leaders of Warner Bros’ “Irish Mob”, Cagney and O’Brien would star in nine films together over the course of their careers, and their off-screen camaraderie was essential to their on-screen chemistry. Angels With Dirty Faces was their seventh collaboration and the friendship between Rocky and Jerry feels appropriately lived in; certainly enough to make it believable that a ruthless gangster and a tender-hearted priest would be best friends. The film’s famous ending - which I won’t spoil here - is one of the earliest attempts at overtly deconstructing the appeal of the gangster archetype and gives Cagney the opportunity to play one of the most moving scenes of his career.
Otherwise, the supporting cast is full of ringers, including Humphrey Bogart as Rocky’s crooked lawyer and Ann Sheridan as the brassy girl next door. Angels With Dirty Faces was shot on the Warner Bros. Bowery lot, a scale recreation of a Lower East Side tenement block - it would seem New York is a character even in movies not shot in New York - and the new Warner Archives Blu-ray edition of the film gives an extra burst of life to the set details and numerous extras.
Additionally, the Blu-ray includes a Warners Night at the Movies feature, which recreates the experience of seeing the film in theaters by including a trailer, newsreel, cartoon and short film from 1938. The trailer is for another Cagney/O’Brien joint called Boy Meets Girl, a screwball comedy about screenwriters. The newsreel shows the signing of the Munich Agreement, which in retrospect is grim, to say the least. The cartoon features Daffy Duck boxing a jacked rooster and the short is a musical number with some famous cameos, including O’Brien.
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