Smiley, Pete, and Ramick: Pals
Lady Killer (1933)
directed by Roy Del Ruth
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
This still is something serious:
The moustache imparts a sinister precision; the backdrop, menace.
This is something else:
The moustache is gone, the Brylcreemed hair hidden beneath a ridiculous usher's cap embossed with the studio's logo. The expression on this man's face is mischievous, not monstrous. Silly, even.
But look at the poster:
When an audience saw James Cagney's name on a theater marquee in 1933, it was clearly a gangster that moviegoers expected to meet on the big screen inside. But Jimmy was a song and dance man, and thankfully he wouldn't be asked to drag his co-stars around a sound stage in a fit of mob fury forever. If I were the intemperate ruler of some muggy dictatorial regime, every mention of the words "Barton Fink" would be excised from the critical lexicon and replaced with the life and times of Dan Quigley, inadvertent leading man. All that unnecessary moll misogyny aside, Lady Killer is as breezy as a movie can be, and better than movies about movies have ever been. Cagney was king of the outliers - not the toughs, the unheralded, or the forgotten, but the vagrants, the slightly sleazy, and the well-intentioned jokers who could not rise above the back-breaking demands of even the most average working day. The king is dead; long live the king.
directed by Roy Del Ruth
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
This still is something serious:
The moustache imparts a sinister precision; the backdrop, menace.
This is something else:
The moustache is gone, the Brylcreemed hair hidden beneath a ridiculous usher's cap embossed with the studio's logo. The expression on this man's face is mischievous, not monstrous. Silly, even.
But look at the poster:
When an audience saw James Cagney's name on a theater marquee in 1933, it was clearly a gangster that moviegoers expected to meet on the big screen inside. But Jimmy was a song and dance man, and thankfully he wouldn't be asked to drag his co-stars around a sound stage in a fit of mob fury forever. If I were the intemperate ruler of some muggy dictatorial regime, every mention of the words "Barton Fink" would be excised from the critical lexicon and replaced with the life and times of Dan Quigley, inadvertent leading man. All that unnecessary moll misogyny aside, Lady Killer is as breezy as a movie can be, and better than movies about movies have ever been. Cagney was king of the outliers - not the toughs, the unheralded, or the forgotten, but the vagrants, the slightly sleazy, and the well-intentioned jokers who could not rise above the back-breaking demands of even the most average working day. The king is dead; long live the king.
posted by NPK at 7:06 PM
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