MY DVD Collection - 09 Feb 2007

(Der öffentliche Feind [de])

USA 1931
d: William A. Wellman
Warner Home Video (Region 0 us)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

Hard to believe that it was the aptly named Woods and not Cagney who was originally slated for the lead role of Tom Powers, the part that rocketed Cagney to stardom and typecast him as a trigger-happy punk. Now, of course, the film seems the archetypal Cagney vehicle as he graduates from petty theft to big-time bootlegging and murder, but it's fairly seminal for other reasons: the acknowledgment that crime is at least partly the product of poor social conditions, the emphasis on booze as the mainspring for the Mob's illegal income, the deployment of events and characteristics from the lives of real-life gangsters (in this case Hymie Weiss) to create myth from fact. Best known for the rampantly misogynist scene in which Cagney plunges a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's nagging face over the breakfast table, the film is badly let down by the performances of Harlow as a classy moll, and Cook and Mercer as Cagney's brother and mother (the latter coming across as a simpering moron). But Cagney's energy and Wellman's gutsy direction carry the day, counteracting the moralistic sentimentality of the script and indelibly etching the star on the memory as a definitive gangster hero.
— GA, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
THE PUBLIC ENEMY is one of the most realistic gangster films ever produced. Wellman's direction is a frontal attack on the subject; other than handling a number of violent deaths offscreen, he spares no brutality of emotion, action, or thought in his grim portrayal of a lethal criminal. Cagney is the gangster of his day, cocky, tough as nails, and utterly without conscience, a character molded into evil by his environment. We see only the criminal world; the one cop shown in detail is Tom's father, a brute who walks around the house in half his uniform, communicating with his unruly child via a razor strop. Photographer Dev Jennings shot the film emphasizing sharp contrasts: glaring sunlit exteriors and grainy gray interiors that fade to black alleyways and gutters.
— TV MovieGuide
•••••
A versatile actor who played a diverse range of roles, James Cagney is probably best remembered as 'public enemy' Tom Powers. William Wellman's genre classic chronicles his rise from slum kid to adolescent hood and finally to big-time bootlegger. Although the film's prologue deplored society's glorification of the gangster, Tom Powers' cocky arrogance and callous violence fascinated audiences. His ruthless pursuit of eminence, unrestrained by law and order, was after all another version (albeit corrupt) of the American success story. Socially irredeemable, Powers earned the title of Public Enemy-just as viciously shooting a man as a horse, brutally smashing a grapefruit in a woman's face, strong-arming beer hall owners, and even disappointing his mother. Although described in the New York Times as 'just another gangster film,' Public Enemy was unusual in its detailing of immigrant family life and urban environment, and its depiction of Powers' life of crime as a reaction to Depression society with few opportunities for (lawful) success.
— Kathy Geritz, PFA

Nothing Sacred

(Denen ist nichts heilig [de])

USA 1937
d: William A. Wellman
SlingShot / Lumivision (Region 0 us)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

>> The DVD [click to show or hide]

>> Reviews [click to show or hide]

Irresistible performance from Lombard as the small town girl, supposedly dying of radium poisoning but well aware that she isn't, who determines to grab all she can get when a newspaper brings her to New York for a last fling as a publicity stunt. Ben Hecht's sparkling script occasionally loses its way between the satire and the screwball romance, but is even more caustic about newspapermen than The Front Page ('The hand of God reaching down into the mire couldn't elevate one of 'em to the depths of degradation'), and provides a welcome antidote to Capracorn in its view of small towns as hellholes to be got out of where an intruder is likely to be stoned or bitten by small boys. Some marvellous digs at the morbid sentimentality of the crowd, too, in particular a scene where a wrestling match is held up for ten seconds in tribute to the doomed girl while the bell solemnly tolls ten times. Quite attractively shot in colour, although prints tend to be suffused by an unpleasant pinkish wash. -- TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
In one of the best of all the thirties satires, Carole Lombard plays a small-town girl who is thought to be dying of radium poisoning. She is given the New York-by-night tour courtesy of a large newspaper company seeking to capitalize on her last (radio)active days. William K. Everson writes, "When screwball comedies were becoming civilized, this one (from a beautiful script by Ben Hecht, based on a story by James Street) is not only magnificently vicious as it takes aim at the overall phoniness of New York City and the newspaper business in general, but it is a forerunner of a kind of 'black' comedy that did not become fashionable until Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be.... Fast-paced, mixing sophistry with slapstick and an unending stream of dazzling one-liners, it is one of the few comedies of its period that really doesn't date.... Fredric March's performance as the reporter--phoney sincerity ultimately becoming the real thing--is one of his funniest and best, and the supporting cast is full of the magnificent character actors who have now vanished from Hollywood films.... [This] was one of the first 3-color Technicolor films to apply color to a modern, big-city story and it does it superbly well."
— PFA

Beau Geste

(Drei Fremdenlegionäre [de])

USA 1939
d: William A. Wellman
Universal Pictures Video (Region 2 us)

>> The Cast & Crew [click to show or hide]

>> The DVD [click to show or hide]

>> Reviews [click to show or hide]