Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I found this film listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it had a good cast and it was rated highly by critics, so I was definitely looking forward to it, from Oscar nominated director Michael Curtiz (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, White Christmas). Basically in 1923, in New York, William "Rocky" Sullivan (Frankie Burke) and Jerry Connolly (William Tracy) attempted a railroad car robbery, Jerry being the faster runner escaped the police, while Rocky was caught and sentenced to reform school. Thirteen years later, Rocky Sullivan (Oscar nominated James Cagney) is arrested for armed robbery, he agrees with his lawyer and co-conspirator, Jim Frazier (Humphrey Bogart), to take the blame, in exchange for the stolen $100,000 on the day he is released. After serving his three years sentence, Rocky returns to his old neighbourhood and visits Jerry (Pat O'Brien), who is now a Catholic priest. Rocky takes Jerry advise to get a place "in the old parish", he rents a room in a boarding house run by Laury Martin (Ann Sheridan), a girl he bullied in school. Rocky then pays a visit to Frazier's casino, Frazier claims he was unaware of his release, but promises to have the $100,000 ready by the end of the week, giving him $500 spending money. Rocky is pick pocketed after leaving the casino, he follows the culprits, a group of youths: Soapy (Billy Halop), Swing (Bobby Jordan), Bim (Leo Gorcey), Pasty (Gabriel Dell), Crab (Huntz Hall), and Hunky (Bernard Punsly). They admire Rocky's reputation and criminal lifestyle, so they retrieve his wallet and invite him to dinner. While they are eating, Jerry shows up and asks the gang why they have not been playing basketball, Rocku convinces to play in a match against another team, Jerry and Laury express are concerned over the negative influence Rocky may be having on the gang. Frazier's hit squad makes an attempt on Rocky's life, he survives and retaliates by kidnapping Frazier, raiding his house and stealing $2,000 and a ledger. Frazier's business partner, Mac Keefer (George Bancroft), gives Rocky his $100,000 in full, but informs the police of the kidnapping, he is arrested, but released for a "misunderstanding" discovering the ledger. Jerry finds out about the kidnapping and goes to the press to express corruption in the city, Rocky unsuccessfully tries to reason with him, on the radio Jerry denounces the corruption, as well as Rocky, Frazier and Keefer. Frazier and Keefer assure Rocky that Jerry will not be harmed, but he overhears their plans to kill them both, Rocky kills Frazier and Keefer, escapes the casino and flees to an abandoned warehouse, there he kills a police officer, and the rest of the force show up, a standoff ensues. Jerry arrives and tries to reason with Rocky, telling him the entire building is surrounded, but Rocky takes Jerry hostage, he tries to escape, but gets shot in the leg and is caught, he stands trial and is sentenced to death. On the night of his execution, Jerry pleads with Rocky to beg for mercy on his way to the death house, to show people he died a coward, citing negative influence on Soapy and his gang, he refuses. But heading to the electric chair, Rocky does beg and scream for mercy, though his motive is unclear to the viewer, Soapy and the gang read about Rocky "turning yellow" before execution, and they lose all respect for him. Also starring Joe Downing as Steve, Edward Pawley as Edwards and Adrian Morris as Blackie. Cagney in an image-defining role is fantastic as the wise-guy gangster, O'Brien does well as the man who went the opposite side of the law, and Bogart proves he can also play a bad guy. I can see many moments that would be copied and even parodied in future movies, but this is full of many gritty moments, most exciting being the shootout sequences, and the famous final "mile" sequence is fantastic, the melodramatic script really gripping, it is simply a brilliantly made and must see classic crime drama. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story. Very good!

I love the fact we can share our love or distaste of a film to forewarn or encourage a viewing. This film i will be encouraging all to see, this film is in my all time list of greatest films to see, yes i have many in this category but i do watch a lot. back in the 70s and 80s not many films were put out on Terrestrial TV apart from many black and white Film Noir movies or westerns. this film i watched many times back then and i am reviving my love of them and why not. this film has three of the best actors there was back then, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Pat O Brian. it has a relatively small cast but it makes it and keeps you entertained fully. The story is about a tough guy (cagney) who is looked upon by the local young hoodlums as a star. Pat O Brian plays his old school chum buddy who has become a priest and trying to keep the young lads in the area on the straight and narrow. Bogart plays the classic double crosser and well what you see is a classic film well shot, acted and keeps you hooked start to finish, you cant go wrong in this film.

I remember the first time I seen this film, I was 13 and my Religious Education teacher in school made up watch it, well we ended up watching the first 40 minutes then he never mentioned it again. I still to this day do not have a single clue as to why he made us watch it, he was an odd fellow to say the least. After he never put it back on for us I decided to rent it to finally watch the whole thing this was when I was about 16/17, and it is safe to say this is one of the movies that made me fall in love with movies to this day! Gangster films flew to the top of the watch lists during the great depression era in America, there was so many released during the 1930's it was obvious that they would be the more favoured films. James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson paved the for gangsters on the big screen. Cagney was a perfect choice to play Rocky Sullivan, he had the swagger of a gangster, the fast talking of a con man, had unbelievable comic timing along with these great traits he was also an intense actor with real raw talent.In my honest opinion this is one of the greatest Gangster flicks of all time, and I genuinely think people will be saying that in another three quarters of a century! Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly played by Frankie Burke and William Tracy respectively are a pair of New Yorker youths who grew up on the very poor Lower East Side end up caught up in the robbery on a railroad car (a railway carriage to us Brits ha). Jerry escapes without any difficulty I mean boom this kid is gone, Rocky on the other hand is not as lucky. Staying true to his tough upbringing Rocky upholds his "code of silence", refusing to snitch on the identity of his accomplice which leaves Rocky stuck in a reformatory before he will be bumped into a full prison.After realising how bad Rockys fate actually is, Jerry turns his life around and becomes a man of the cloth. After many years pass, Rocky returns to his old neighbourhood now being played by Cagney he looks up his old friend Jerry to find out he is no Father Jerry (Pat O'Brien) whom has taken in on himself to look after a rag tag bunch of boys played by Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell who would all go to become The Dead End Kids. The boys are overjoyed that they get to meet a big-time gangster like Rocky, they pretty much worship the ground he walks on, much to the disappointment of Father Jerry who is trying to guard the boys from a life of crime.Cagney pays a call to his Lawyer, played by Humphrey Bogart who has been keeping $100,000 (which according to DollarTimes is roughly $1.6 million today) stashed away for him. He meets racketeering boss Mac Keefer (George Bancroft), both of whom promise to cut Rocky in on a highly lucrative operations, however this is where we hit a twist they are plotting to have him whacked (MY WHOLE LIFE have I wanted to use that phrase and it too actually work, and now I think it fits! ha) Father Jerry runs a campaign over the radio and newspaper against Rocky and his partners, with Rockys blessing that is. Laury by now played by the beautiful Ann Sheridan has fallen in love with Rocky.When Rocky learns of the plot to kill Father Jerry due to his smear campaign, Rocky kills both men which results in him being caught in a shoot-out with the police in a warehouse. His trial is quick and he is sentenced to death, before Rocky is about to be executed Father Jerry turns up asking for possibly the BIGGEST favour in movie history. He wants Rocky to die like a coward so the boys will go on the straight and narrow, Rocky refuses, however as he is being put to death Rocky suddenly breaks down an loses it crying and pleading for his life! The paper the next runs the story "ROCKY DIES YELLOW!" to help the boys cement the belief that he well and truly is coward.So overall this movie is action filled, full of laughs, full of great performances all across the board giving us viewers an unbelievable movie experience! A little fact I learnt while writing this review is that during the warehouse scene, LIVE AMMO was used, how on earth did they get away with that ha. All these parts come together cultivating in what is one of the greatest movies of all time! This will be one of the easiest ratings that I will give to a film, if I could go any higher than 10 I would! "Whaddya hear, whaddya say?"

After watching this fascinating movie for the first time, I picked up a book, in one of those coincidences that life gives to us that are completely unlikely, with the name Famous Quotes From Famous People. And in one of the various quotes that were printed in the pages of that little book, there was one that caught my attention, because it corresponded to the opinion I formed about this excellent work of art that my eyes had the pleasure to behold. The quote is from Robert Frost, one of the greatest authors of north-American poetry, and he says: "It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound — that he will never get over it." And if we change the "Poem" mentioned by Frost for "Movie", the opinion of the writer perfectly suits to Angels with Dirty Faces... and to many other movies I love, I confess. I say this because I think this film, directed by Michael Curtiz (the filmmaker who would make, some years later, that unforgettable classic called Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart too, but here in Angels he has a supporting - but terrific! - role), has always been in the shadow of other great movies, much more popular, and this one had just endured because it obtained, over the decades, a legion of numerous fans of the treasures of Cinema (the picture has now a score of 8.0 on IMDb, which is very good). But if it were only "time" causes, as Frost said, Angels with Dirty Faces would be lost in that decade (not so) far away that was the thirties. If we expected the film would endure over the years (having neither great acclaim from critics the following decades, or the recognition of major institutions such as the American Film Institute), it would be as if it never existed. I mean, watching the quality of the negative (and we do not know if it is "the" negative) that was converted for the DVD so-so special edition of this motion picture, it's noticeable that it never had appropriate conditions of conservation (there are various faults, very visible, in the reels and in many frames, throughout the film).But I said the movie was in the shadow. And then I talk again in Casablanca. That is, probably, the most popular title from Michael Curtiz's filmography. But it hid many other great movies of the director, such as this one. And I love Casablanca, it is one of my other favorite movies of all time. But it's sad when a motion picture almost "destroy" all the work of a filmmaker who, by the way, was one of the greatest professionals in his area at that time, because Curtiz has so much to explore (in quality and in quantity - in the year Angels was release, Curtiz made three other movies, almost simultaneously. And today, that's a big achievement, if we compare with the super- productions, many of them so uninteresting, that take too long to be made...), and this wonderful picture is the example of that quality, of the American classic Cinema that is impossible to remake today, because they are of a decade and of a period of Hollywood where the excellence of the production of the great directors were so inspiring, touching, and original. Angels with Dirty Faces is a movie of a genre that was fashionable at the time it debuted: the gangster movies, and when were made terrific and terrible and "standard" titles in that genre. It is like the westerns. Many of them were made in the "golden ages" of the cowboy movie stories, but very few of them stood out. Many of the gangster movies had just beatings, corruption and vulgar love stories...However, there are always isolated spots in the middle of the ocean, and Angels with Dirty Faces elevates the genre of the gangster film to a higher level, as can also give some touches of film noir and good drama that attach to this work a superlative quality. The story is told in a fluid way, very quickly but without losing any shred of credibility.The result of this variety of stories (which are all very simple, but with more depth than they appear) is a powerful and unparalleled work in the Classic Cinema. Michael Curtiz's achievement is intelligent and emotionally overwhelming, and I enjoyed the strong use of light in the scenarios, the photography of the scenes (which loses some of its glimmer because of the degraded copy of the DVD), the performances of the actors, the script, which has great quotes and is very well planned, executed and interpreted. The soundtrack is excellent and fits perfectly with the whole film, being well selected and organized. I emphasize also the camera angles, approaching us from the characters and the environments that surround them (and with that Curtiz showed one of its greatest strengths and talents), and that was the cause of my excitement with the last moments of the film ((such as the apotheosis of Cagney and O'Brien, showing that friendship and human dignity has no limits, regardless of the environment in which we were born). Angels with Dorty Faces is, for me, and I say this without fear, a masterpiece. This movie shows how certain classics, even if they can not withstand the time, the lists of critics and all those things, they can always, if they're good, get a cult of fans delighted with it, managing to increase interest in discovering this movie treasures.