Movie Mahal

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Arguably a quintessential Warner Bros gangster pic that zips along with so much charm, style and Jimmy Cagney at his smarmy best. Circling back to this one from having seen so many contemporary gangster films it becomes evidently clear the film’s mighty sway on the genre, and that is a given really, but what becomes even more salient is the film’s satisfying craftmanship; a masterly studio film in which the semi-expressionist cinematography, the striking costumes, exceptional production design and Raoul Walsh’s dynamic use of the camera summons the classical as something sacredly modern and clinical. I don’t think there is ever a moment in the film when you are not rooting for Cagney, and which makes him one of the more humanist hoodlums to ever grace the screen.

The rise and fall narrative seem almost subpar today but we all know that in the universe of the gangster it offers both an epic style and tragic scope, and Cagney’s Eddie Bartlett fall from grace is unbearably wretched, not only as a victim of history, but as someone who gets swallowed up by a capitalist system that he doesn’t comprehend while the tectonic shift from blue to white collar crime elides his pitiful grasp. With the end of prohibition Eddie’s relegation to the scrapheap seems altogether inevitable but the redemptive arc frames his demise as expiation, a footnote for the faded proletariat in a changing America.