The Roaring Twenties (1939), Raoul Walsh.

 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.

The Jazz Singer (1927), Alan Crosland.

Oh, it gets worse.  WAY WORSE!

HILARIOUS. People will tell you this is boring and mainly just a landmark because it's one of the first films to use synchronized sound.  Wrong!  The sound segments pop out and grab you.  They move faster.  To my eyes the differences were stunning - I can only imagine the impact on its contemporary audiences.  

Gut reaction:  Al Jolson's eternal fame is a total fluke.  He doesn't have much screen presence, he talks through his "jazz songs" and he's no looker.  Like mama Rabinowitz, I don't get it.  The scene (pictured above) where he readies himself for his blackface act was oddly protracted as he methodically applied all that facepaint.  What really gave me the creeps was the little scrap of fabric he pulls over his hair to complete his look.  What the eff was that made out of? 

I think it's time for a 2011 reboot.

AAAAAAAAAA!

Possessed (1947), Curtis Bernhardt.

Joan Crawford loses it for Van Heflin (!), a smug engineer who claims to be more in love with the curve of a parabola than anything she's got and blows cigarette smoke in her face while "making love to the piano."  Crawford plays nurse Louise Howell, a woman who from the first moment we see her does not have much of a grip on reality.  Very strange tone to the film - is it a soap, a horror? - it's kind of everything.  And I'm not very interested in parsing the term "noir," which also gets attached to this film.  I was surprised by one sequence in which Howell's husband brings her to his lake house, which is draped for the winter season and was the site where his previous wife drowned; Howell had been this woman's aide.  Even though the house is deserted, Howell is convinced she can hear her old mistress buzzing for her through the intercom.  As she makes her way upstairs, we get a proto-hand held camera effect.  The shaky shots follow Crawford's figure up the stairs and into the empty bedroom, giving that same immediacy and intimacy than it's meant to do today.  OK, so I might have jumped when let out that blood curdling yell once she gets to the bedroom.  Very cool! 

The themes in these "women's pictures" intrigue me.   I can never tell if any of the men are supposed to be romantic ideals or if they are all meant to be seen as total unreliable dopes and scoundrels.  The trope of the wealthy man who stands by his psychotic, bedridden wife:  frankly, it seems to grate depressingly against any kind of fantasy - well, I'd rather be enjoying his cash, not going nuts laying in a four-poster.  This would be why I found The Damned Don't Cry far more fun than Possessed.  Van HEFLIN?  OK, I'll dip my toe: maybe Possessed could be seen as a women's noir, with hommes fatals the total undoing of our protagonist.

There's a lot of chitchat between Raymond Massey and Van Heflin about Canada which is amusing - apparently people are all "spread out thinly" (where did they go, Pickle Lake?) and we all drink a lot of "Kentucky Whisky" (not anymore).  Massey of course was born in Canada to a well-established family; while a grad student, I once volunteered to give historic tours of his childhood residence.  It was super deluxe, with built-in hardwood cabinetry, plenty of decorative plaster molding.  I followed a script and monotonously repeated that Raymond Massey was best known for playing Abe Lincoln.  The house by that point had fallen on hard times - in the 70s or 80s the basement was kitted out as a DJ booth for a radio station and by the 90s it was abandoned and used by squatters.  I came across a few forks while escorting the Raging Grannies through this interesting piece of architectural history.  I couldn't tell you if it is even standing today but another adjacent Massey residence is now The Keg.  Ah, Canada! 

Don't move, or I'll turn the Governor General's grandparents' place into a steak house!

Illegal (1955), Lewis Allen.

Victor Scott demonstrates some theatrical lawyering.

OK.  People are going to tell you this movie is a stinker, a two star dud that pales next to Edward G Robinson's A-pictures, that it was all they would give him during his greylist period.  The last bit may be true, but forget the rest!  Now, before you accuse me of loving everything Robinson appeared in, let me tell you that sentimental claptrap Our Vines Have Tender Grapes made me want to throw up from the first frame. Fair?  Yes, Illegal is a pulp film --hey, some contemporary critics thought Double Indemnity was trash-- but it's quite entertaining.

Robinson plays District Attorney Victor Scott who suffers a professional tumble when he mistakenly sends an innocent man (Deforest Kelley) to fry in the electric chair.  (What?  If it happens in the first few minutes, it's not a spoiler)!  After going on a whisky spree, he settles for cheap and tawdry antics as a criminal defense lawyer, attracting the interests of a local racketeer who wants him on the payroll.   The film is not sluggish and is stuffed with smart lines.   Nina Foch plays a strangely complex character, a cool and collected blond raised by Robinson after her father dies who becomes his legal assistant.  I was a little puzzled by the idea that she should have been his love interest-- Daddy issues!  This movie even has an imitation Marilyn Monroe, "Angel O'Hara," played by Jayne Mansfield who demonstrates what looks like fake piano playing in several scenes.  In this movie, everyone's a little grubby!