Review of Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) by Lisa S — 26 Feb 2007

The DVD release of this film includes the newsreel that originally accompanied it. We are told with great hope that Neville Chamberlain has secured peace with Hitler.

It's a pretty good setup for the dated innocence of this picture. This movie was made in 1938, and it shows. It's so pure! I think it intends to have a message, but I think its message is a little confused. It might be intended to be an indictment of the reform school system, and it's certainly intended to be an indictment of organized crime, but it doesn't really work as either.

For one thing, the crime isn't terribly organized. It's basically James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and some other guy, and everyone else in crime just sort of blunders around shooting at James Cagney--and missing. It's a little off.

For another, there doesn't seem to be any real crime! There's mysteriously-appearing money, to be sure, but no context; for all we know, Humphrey Bogart just got really lucky on the stock market. He can't be running gin; Prohibition had been over for five years. We never hear of him knocking over banks, or even liquor stores. We don't hear of him running numbers or protection or anything. And the only people who get shot are other gangsters.

Yes, all right. he "owns City Hall." But if all he did was get himself out of prison so he could go run a nightclub, so what? Yes, he held Humphrey Bogart for ransom, but the ransom was actually his own money.

I guess gambling is probably illegal, but the priest never says anything, and certainly I find it less shocking than those kids buying beer. Then again, there was no legal minimum drinking age until 1962. Still, drunken teenagers wandering the streets is pretty bad. What's a little roulette to that?

And let's talk about that priest. Face it, kids--basketball isn't the answer to juvenile delinquency. Still, it's rather hard to picture full-contact spelling bees.