Crazy kids, drinking hooch and crashing their jalopies!
The Roaring Twenties should be remade PRONTO, substituting the criminalization of marijuana in place of booze for its story arc. This is a gorgeous looking film, very crisp, but I will admit to growing distracted and doing other things while it was on. The film strikes a decent balance between acknowledging that the Volstead Act was a bad law, and chastising folks who profited from it. I'm just not a fan of sentimentality, although it's interesting to observe that it only took about ten short years for Hollywood to become nostalgic for its glory days.
Priscilla Lane plays the object of James Cagney's affections, but she's about as intriguing as a pan of warm milk. And she sings constantly, those dull little sentimental ditties that white folks in the twenties liked so much.
First, she sings on the train:
Then she auditions in a club.
What is this one, maybe "Yes, sir, that's my baby"?
Oh, another number.
The film kicks off with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart sharing a smoke in the trenches but then this sing-song romance consumes most of the film, obscuring the more interesting story of Cagney's struggle as an ex-soldier to re-integrate into society (turning instead to bootlegging). Cagney's great as usual but the film only really comes alive when he plays off cranky, hardbitten Humphrey Bogart.
No comments:
Post a Comment