Mister Roberts 1955 - Petty tyranny and the man who fights it

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IMDB Rating: 7,9

Directors: John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, Betsy Palmer, Ward Bond, Philip Carey

"Mister Roberts was one of the more thoughtful, reflective films from the 1950s to deal with World War II. It was a reflection of the distance filmmakers as well as the public had come from the war, a distance which allowed for a more sophisticated dramatic treatment of the conflict and the people involved. Other films during this era also reflected the new maturity, among them, The Caine Mutiny, Between Heaven and Hell, and The Naked and the Dead. Mister Roberts was the most successful of them all, and for good reason - though getting it made properly took real work. It stood to figure that John Ford was ideal for the project, since he loved the United States Navy more than almost anything else in his life (he retired from the reserves as a rear admiral). With Mister Roberts, however, Ford may have been too close to his subject to do justice to the script, and he butted up against the competing personality of star Henry Fonda. Fonda had scored a huge hit on Broadway in the stage version of Mister Roberts, but he'd given up hope of ever doing the movie, since he hadn't been on-screen in eight years and major studios weren't convinced that he was still a box office draw. As a condition of directing the film, Ford insisted on Fonda to star - but the two were at loggerheads from the beginning of the production, mainly over the director's tendency to inject rough-house comedy into his movies. Such an approach breathed life into Ford's somber cavalry movies, such as Fort Apache, but Mister Roberts was a character-driven story with very little real action, and Fonda thought the director's emphasis on laughs would destroy the integrity of the material. Ford's demanding, dictatorial directing style - exacerbated by his excessive drinking - created tension between the two, which erupted into a fistfight after only a few weeks' work. Ford left the production and was replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, who essentially asked the cast to use their best judgement and make the kind of movie Ford would've made. The end result is a finely textured character study that captured the best dramatic moments of the play as it interspersed an effective, new comic element. Fonda, who'd previously performed in four films for the director, would never work with Ford again; the director would only make one more navy film after Mister Roberts, the successful Donovan's Reef.
One of the finest service comedies ever made, Mister Roberts spawned a less amusing sequel, Ensign Pulver (1964), as well as a 1965 TV sitcom." - www.allmovie.com

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White heat 1949 - "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!"

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IMDB rating: 8,2

Director: Raoul Walsh
Main Cast: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly

"James Cagney made his name on screen as a criminal, and he gave his last truly great outlaw performance in White Heat, which may well be the most intelligent and striking work of his career. While Cagney always knew how to lend his characters a charismatic menace, his Cody Jarrett in White Heat is both menacing and uncomfortably bizarre. Given to strange semi-epileptic seizures, sudden bursts of horrible violence, and a bizarre attachment to his mother that stops just short of incest, Cody represents the criminal as head case, at once fascinating and disturbingly unstable. Cagney manages to lend Cody just enough of his traditional tough-talking, wise guy veneer that he seems like a conventional screen criminal at first, but it doesn't take long for Cody to reveal himself as a full-blown psychotic, and the perversely self-immolating 'Made it, Ma! Top of the world!' finale is only the most spectacular symptom of his madness. Raoul Walsh's direction is hardly as audacious as Cagney's performance, but it is crisp, efficient, and briskly paced, and in a way Cagney's portrayal may well be all the more effective in this context. While White Heat's narrative often seems like the traditional story of a charismatic bad guy who will be forced to pay for his crimes in the last reel, it instead houses a different and most puzzling sort of villain, who paved the way for the stranger, more brutal outlaws who would dominate crime cinema in the 1960s and 1970s." - www.allmovie.com

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Yankee Doodle Dandy 1942 - A classic biography showcasing Cagney's talents

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston

"Yankee Doodle Dandy was one of the best World War II-era patriotic propaganda films, and it has proven itself enduringly popular in the decades following its release. The film succeeds almost entirely on the performance of James Cagney as legendary song-and-dance performer George M. Cohan, although significant credit should also be given to director Michael Curtiz, who expertly stages each scene to display the talents of his star. The film features an over-the-top framing device in which Cohan tells his life's story in flashback to President Franklin Roosevelt. The story is effectively fiction, using only the outline of Cohan's life and some of his songs as reference points. The musical sequences are among the best in any film of the era. The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, including Best Actor for Cagney. The real-life Cohan died shortly after the film's release, living long enough to see it and like it despite, or perhaps because of, its lack of accuracy about his life." - www.allmovie.com

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The roaring twenties 1939 - The torrid, blazing, wild, lush, lurid twenties

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IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: Raoul Walsh
Main Cast: James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane, Gladys George, Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh

"Raoul Walsh was one of cinema's greatest action directors in both silents and talkies, and The Roaring Twenties was a breakthrough film for him. Though he had directed standard comedies and melodramas before the film, Twenties would secure him a reputation as a bankable action director at Warner Bros. in the late 1930s. James Cagney, one of the great leads of the gangster-movie era, turns in an assured performance in the film: his demise on the snowy steps of a church is one of the most famous death scenes in movie history. Humphrey Bogart has a memorable supporting performance, though he would not become a big star until two years after the film, in Walsh's High Sierra and John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Cagney and Bogart appeared together in two other movies, the gangster melodrama Angels with Dirty Faces and the Western The Oklahoma Kid." - www.allmovie.com

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The public enemy 1931 - William A. Wellman's landmark gangster movie

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook

"One of the great pre-Production Code gangster films, William Wellman's The Public Enemy made James Cagney a star, providing him with his defining role: Tom Powers, a bitter Chicago gangster driven to a tragic end. Like its contemporaries Little Caesar and Scarface, The Public Enemy was surprisingly ambitious in its examination of the social causes that drive young men into a life of crime, closely examining the allure of street gangs to working-class youths. Although the film goes to great lengths to claim that it does not glamorize criminal activity - providing a moralistic introduction and conclusion designed to ward off censorship - many powerful people felt otherwise, and the film's notoriety helped install the more draconian Production Code of 1934. The film's mixed message occurs largely because Cagney is so charismatic an antihero, especially compared to his straight-arrow brother, played woodenly by Donald Cook. Though the film is sometimes visually static, a common problem given the constraints of early sound cinema, it remains bracing and brutal, filled with an air of menace and hopelessness." - www.allmovie.com

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Lady killer 1933 - Cagney as a Hollywood gangster

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IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: Roy Del Ruth
Main Cast: James Cagney, Mae Clarke, Margaret Lindsay, Leslie Fenton

"Mae Clarke, in her autobiography Featured Player (1996), claimed that James Cagney and director William Wellman basically created the famous grapefruit incident in The Public Enemy (1931) without her consent and that the viciousness of the attack had shocked her. The scene is, of course, unforgettable and a follow-up inevitable. It came two-thirds of the way through Lady Killer when gangster-turned-movie star Cagney discovers a kittenish Miss Clarke in his bedroom - much to the consternation of his movie-star girlfriend Margaret Lindsay. Despite his newfound sophistication, Cagney acts as he would have in Hell's Kitchen: He drags the unwelcome guest out of the room by her hair! This time, happily, Clarke was in on the gag and she is visibly holding on for dear life to Cagney's wrists. The scene is still startling in its brutality, especially coming in what is really a comedy. And despite this act of physical abuse and a climactic shootout that leaves bodies scattered all over what appears to be Mulholland Highway in Los Angeles, Lady Killer is a comedy and a good one. As always, the Warner Bros. stock company is in high gear throughout and there are especially enjoyable performances by Douglas Dumbrille as Cagney's former partner-in-crime and Herman Bing as an autocratic director of Western movies. Lady Killer is vintage Cagney, throwing virtually every one of his star-making attributes (including one cute reference to his legendary 'grapefruit scene' in 1931's The Public Enemy) into one entertaining 76-minute stew." - www.allmovie.com

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Smart money 1931 - A historic screen teaming of Robinson & Cagney

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022403/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,9

Director: Alfred E. Green
Main Cast: Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Evalyn Knapp, Ralf Harolde, Noel Francis, Margaret Livingston

"Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney were teamed for the only time in their careers in Smart Money. Robinson has the larger part as a small-town barber who fancies himself a big-time gambler. He travels to the Big City in the company of his younger brother Cagney, who wants to make sure that Robinson isn't fleeced by the high-rollers. Unfortunately Robinson has a weakness for beautiful blondes, most of whom take him for all his money or betray him in some other manner. The cops aren't keen on Robinson's gambling activities, but they can pin nothing on him until he accidentally kills Cagney in a fight. The incident results in a jail term for manslaughter, and a more sober-sided outlook on life for the formerly flamboyant Robinson. Watch closely in the first reel of Smart Money for an unbilled appearance by Boris Karloff as a dope pusher." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/smart-money-v120107

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The doorway to hell 1930 - Early crime melodrama with memorable gangster cliches

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020836/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,5

Director: Archie Mayo
Main Cast: Lew Ayres, James Cagney, Dorothy Mathews

"In this early talkie, a vicious crime lord (played by Lew Ayres in a rare villainous role) decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command (James Cagney in his second film role) and retire to Florida after marrying his moll. Unfortunately, he has no idea that she and Cagney are lovers. Part of the reason the don wants to leave is to keep his young brother, who idolizes him, from learning the awful truth about his avocation. Soon after moving down to Florida, former rivals kidnap the brother and kill him, causing the reformed gangster to come back for deadly revenge. This was an innovative film and featured a lot of elements that would become standards in the gangster genre including tommy guns carried in violin cases, terrible shoot-outs, and lots of rum-running rivalry." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-doorway-to-hell-v89811

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Angels with dirty faces 1938 - An impressive cast in a gangster classic

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029870/
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft, The Dead End Kids

"Young viewers unfamiliar with 1930s era gangster melodramas might think that this classic is full of well-worn clichés, but Angels with dirty faces is the kind of film that brews up the bromides for others to dispense. Decades of homage, satire, and straight-up rip-offs have ensured generations of folks who have never seen a James Cagney film but always recognize an impersonation ('You dirty rat!'). Angels with dirty faces has aged well, still delivering plenty of excitement and hard-boiled action alongside its touches of hokum: the kindly priest of the ghetto parish, the cold killer with a soft spot for kids, and the long-suffering neighborhood girl who loves them both. The cast is packed with future icons at work. A pre-legend Humphrey Bogart plays against type as a conniving, cowardly lawyer, still three years away from The Maltese falcon, and four years from his defining role in Casablanca (also helmed by Angels director Michael Curtiz). Pat O'Brien had made several films with Cagney prior to Angels in which he often served as his cast mate's foil, but this is the first time O'Brien played a priest, a persona he'd be associated with for years to come. The Dead End Kids didn't premiere with Angels, but they're still in their prime, too raw and tough here to be full-fledged comic relief; it would be a few years before their scrappy personas aged into buffoonery as the Bowery Boys. Then there's Cagney, at the height of his firebrand power, swaggering and sneering with charisma to burn. One never doubts that Cagney could survive a swarm of bullets in the climactic gunfight, as he wages a one-man war against both cops and crooks. Angels with dirty faces seems to acknowledge its star's glamour and the possibility of his gangster image celebrated and worshipped by impressionable youth. When Father Jerry asks Rocky Sullivan to feign cowardice as he walks to the electric chair, it's to prevent the naïve Dead End Kids from hailing him a martyr who spits at authority up to his last seconds on earth. Sullivan finally puts on the act, begging and pleading for life, and loses all credibility in the eyes of his onscreen admirers. Despite the film studio's intention of 'social commentary', however, the audience in the theater watching Angels may feel this final cop-out makes the character even more appealing. After all, Rocky Sullivan shows great fortitude by 'turning yellow' in the face of death; it was something he loathed to do, but chose because of his affection for the Kids and his friendship with the priest. Who wouldn't want to be that cool?" - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/angels-with-dirty-faces-v2391

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A Midsummer Night's dream 1935 - A quite satisfying Shakespearean adaptation

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026714/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
IMDB rating: 7,1

Directors: William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt
Main Cast: Dick Powell, Ross Alexander, Olivia de Havilland, Jean Muir, Verree Teasdale, James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, Anita Louise

"Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this instance the impending wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Although it is not without flaws, the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream is by and large a delight. Given the casting, it's inevitable that there would be some grumblings with this Dream; for one thing, there's an awful lot of Hollywood in here and very little English. But, surprisingly, some of those Hollywood names turn in exceptional performances. Top of the list is the thoroughly delightful James Cagney as Bottom, leader of the mechanicals. His enthusiastic, audacious, ultimately captivating turn brings abundant life to the film and makes one forget that, really, this man shouldn't be so at home with Shakespeare. As one of Cagney's cronies, Joe E. Brown is also a surprising pleasure, making up for the misfire of fellow mechanical Hugh Herbert. An extraordinarily young Olivia de Havilland is fetching and entirely winning as Hermia, and Victor Jory is just about perfect as Oberon. On the down side, there's Dick Powell, entirely out of his depth as Lysander. Most controversial is the Puck of Mickey Rooney, which some find charming and appealing and others find busy and annoying; suffice it to say that while he admirably captures the feeling of youthful and irreverent mischief that is at the heart of the character, he does so in a manner that is often forced. Although the direction is a tad uneven, the art direction and special effects (especially the nocturnal dance of the fairies) are breathtakingly beautiful. Mendelssohn's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' incidental music is masterfully orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, while the cinematography by Hal Mohr earned the first write-in Academy Award in Hollywood history (Mohr had not been nominated due to hostilities arising from a recent industry strike). Considered a brave failure at the time of its first release, on a purely visual level A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the more satisfying Shakespearean cinemadaptations of Hollywood's golden age." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/a-midsummer-nights-dream-v32585/

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G-men 1935 - Cagney on the side of law this time

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026393/?ref_=nv_sr_3
IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: William Keighley
Main Cast: James Cagney, Margaret Lindsay, Ann Dvorak, Robert Armstrong, Barton MacLane, Lloyd Nolan

"In G Men, Warner Bros. 'bad boy' James Cagney plays James 'Brick' Davis, a young lawyer whose education has been financed by soft-hearted racketeer McKay (William Harrigan). When Cagney's best pal, detective Eddie Buchanan (Regis Toomey), is killed in a gangland shooting, James decides to become a G-Man. Though scrupulously honest, Davis is looked upon with suspicion by his fellow agents because of his association with the crooked McKay. He proves he's a 'good guy' when his former girlfriend, Jean (Ann Dvorak), now the wife of mobster Brad Collins (Barton MacLane), tips him off to a 'Little Bohemia'-style gangster hideaway. Jean later sacrifices her own life to help James rescue his new girl, nurse Kay McCord (Margaret Lindsay), from the vengeful Collins.
Based on Gregory Miller's book Public Enemy No. 1, G-Men was reissued in 1949, with an added prologue featuring David Brian as an FBI trainer who advises his students not to laugh at the old-fashioned costumes and slang in the 1935 film; seen today, it is Brian's superfluous opening comments that seem hopelessly dated, while the film itself is as exciting and entertaining as ever." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/g-men-v19031/

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Footlight parade 1933 - A bravura exercise in song and dance

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024028/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Main Cast: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell

"The last - and to some aficionados, the best - of choreographer Busby Berkeley's three Warner Bros. efforts of 1933, Footlight Parade stars James Cagney as a Broadway musical comedy producer. As with many films of this type, the story is incidental, though the non-musical scenes benefit from a fine performance from James Cagney as a Broadway producer displaced by the film industry's transition to sound. In the early sound era, Warner Bros. was second only to MGM in opulent production values, and Footlight Parade outshines most films of its type from that era. Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler are tops among the supporting cast, though there are no weak spots. Director Lloyd Bacon had a reputation for an efficient indifference to stylistic filmmaking. Here he has Berkeley and Cagney to create the style for him. he last half-hour of Footlight Parade is a nonstop display of Busby Berkeley at his most spectacular: the three big production numbers, all written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, are 'By a Waterfall', 'Honeymoon Hotel', and 'Shanghai Lil', the latter featuring some delicious pre-code scatology, and a tap-dance duet by Cagney and Keeler. The result is what many critics consider one of the best musicals of the 1930s." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/footlight-parade-v18113

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