Sergeant Madden (1939)

Absolutely Fantastic

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is a good movie. It's not one of the great all-time movies; it's not even one of the great all-time crime dramas. But it's a good movie. The current IMDb average of 5.9 for this movie does it a gross injustice. It deserves at least at 6.8, and maybe as high as 7.1.The pacing of the story is good; it never drags. The camera work is good, and the atmosphere in the night scenes is good. It's a visually pleasing film.The acting is good. Wallace Beery, who can ham it up with the best of them, could have overdone the sentimental Irish cop routine, but he restrains himself to present a well-balanced and credible character, no mere cartoon version of a New York cop. In fact, it is one of the better performances I've seen Beery give. All the other actors, in roles either major or minor, are good in their roles as well. Laraine Day shines, and Alan Curtis is very good as well. Marc Lawrence gets a larger-than-normal supporting part and does very well with it. Mary Field, who often plays domestics with only trivial speaking lines, gets a meatier role here (though it lasts only one scene), and shows she can act.If the film has any major fault, it lies in the script. Alan Curtis does a good job (especially in the final scenes) with what he is given by the screenplay, but the origin of the chip on his character's shoulder is never really explained, and there aren't many nuances in his hard-edged character throughout most of the film. This makes it hard to sympathize with him in any way, or even to understand what Laraine Day ever saw in him. We feel more sympathy even for Marc Lawrence's gangster leader than for Curtis's angry young cop. Had Curtis's character been better fleshed out, this would have been not merely a good movie but a very good one.To its credit, the film makes no pretensions of greatness; it never gives the impression that it is telling a more important story than it is. Its story is told in a low-key manner. Perhaps for that reason, it doesn't stand out among the movies of 1939 with their grand themes and larger-than life characters (Hunchback or Notre Dame, Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, Gunga Din, and so on). I get the impression that this film is given a lower ranking than it deserves because fans of Josef von Sternberg were expecting something else from it. They would have liked it to be more like his earlier, highly stylized films which they consider classic. It's as if the film is being punished, not for being a bad film, but for being not Sternbergish enough. A similar thing happens with Alfred Hitchock's film Jamaica Inn, which is generally ranked very low despite the fact that it's quite a good film (though properly seen only in the restored Cohen edition); it is belittled because, stylistically, it's not Hitchcockish enough. Yet if one watches Jamaica Inn without prior expectations of what a Hitchcock film should be like -- or better still, if one watches it without realizing that it was directed by Hitchcock -- one will almost certainly enjoy it. The same is true, I submit, for Sergeant Madden.Again, this is not a great film -- the director could have insisted on a better script, or rewritten parts himself. But it's a solid film. It was not deserving of any Academy Awards, but it is deserving of far better than a 5.9.

This is another atypical Sternberg film, his sole official effort at staid MGM; I TAKE THIS WOMAN (1940; which is to follow) was another assignment for that studio that would however be completed by other hands. Still, given the presence of Wallace Beery, I thought this would be a comedy-drama whereas it turned out to be a thriller with elements of both the gangster pictures then at their zenith and the soon-to-be in vogue noirs! That said, the film starts off in a sentimental vein as Irish copper – with traditional heart-of-gold – Beery offers to raise a slew of orphaned or abandoned babies. The catch is that, when they grow up, the kids would cause all sorts of trouble for him: two are in love but another claims the girl (Laraine Day) for himself and, while the latter (Alan Curtis in the kind of role John Garfield would come to specialize in) follows in father's footsteps, his impatience for promotion sees him antagonize a notorious gangster (Marc Lawrence) who had learned to respect Beery and eventually turn criminal in his own right! The latter aspect links the film with his earlier (UNDERWORLD [1927], THUNDERBOLT [1929]) and later (MACAO [1952]) phases and, while MGM was best-known for producing wholesome, entertainment-oriented fare, they did churn out the occasional hard-hitting picture over the years. Beery, too, could be serious and schmaltzy and here he mixes the two to reasonable satisfaction.Though, as I said, Sternberg was unable to invest the proceedings with his trademark style, the film does incorporate an effective montage sequence (courtesy of Peter Ballbusch, who had worked for the director on his masterpiece i.e. THE SCARLET EMPRESS [1934]) depicting Curtis' 'road-to-ruin'.

MGM worked hard to create on and off-screen personas for the stars. Sometimes these images weren't far from the truth and other times they bore little similarity to the facts. A great case in point is Wallace Beery. Through the 30s and 40s, MGM cultivated the image of a giant teddy bear of a man--gruff but with a heart of gold with a soft spot for children. Unfortunately, everything I have ever read about Beery is that he was a total creep--violent, angry and an all-around mean guy. Apparently his violence led to this divorce from Gloria Swanson and Jackie Cooper's autobiography describes Beery as surly and often drunk. Not a nice guy at all...but a sweetheart on camera.I mention all this because "Sergeant Madden" might just be the quintessential 'nice guy' role for Beery. He is not just a cop--but an almost impossible to believe nice cop! He has an affinity for bringing home orphans and adopting them--he's THAT nice in the film! It's not just because I know about the real-life Beery that this is silly--no one is THAT nice and the film overdid this in the film. Giving him some flaws would have been great, as his character in this film makes Santa look like a serial killer!! Now had this been the only excess of the movie, I could have easily looked past it. However, throughout the film I kept thinking 'this CAN'T happen in real life!'--and the plot does strain reality way past the breaking point! The film begins with Beery adopting kids. However, as his own son grows, he shows a vicious streak. He wants to be a policeman like his old man, but without any of the sweetness or restraint. His methods are to make the public fear him and it's not too long before he shoots a young criminal in the back. He clearly over-stepped his bounds and should have been up on manslaughter charges, but for some odd reason the police look the other way. But, the mob is furious--this cop must be taught a lesson. So, they frame the bad cop and soon he's sent to prison. But he soon escapes and goes from bad cop to a one-man crime spree--killing and stealing with abandon! And so, in the end, it's up to good ol' Sergeant Madden (Beery) to come to the rescue.As you probably gathered from this description, the plot is very hard to believe. HOWEVER, here's the odd part...it IS very entertaining and is a film you just can't stop watching. My 16 year-old who rarely ever watched old films sat through this one and enjoyed it--despite the schmaltz and ridiculous plot. So, I think it deserves a 6--it is worth seeing despite its shortcomings.

Typical Wallace Beery feature rendered weird and beautiful by von Sternberg direction. Although only Beery gives a good performance -- slower and much more introspective than his usual Long John Silver of this era --the von Sternberg visual touches -- the odd camera angle that brings out the lines on Beery's face, or the macrame drapes that cast shadows on the juveniles -- make this a deeply disturbing movie, like Tarrantino directing an episode of Sesame Street.