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The Roaring Twenties
Die Wilden Zwanziger
USA 1939
produced by Hal B. Wallis (executive) for Warner Brothers
directed by Raoul Walsh
starring James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Gladys George, Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh, Paul Kelly, Elisabeth Risdon, Edward Keane, Joe Sawyer, Joseph Crehan, George Meeker, John Hamilton, Robert Elliott, Eddy Chandler, Abner Biberman, Vera Lewis, John Deering, Murry Alper, Raymond Bailey, Wade Boteler, Al Bridge, Clay Clement, Alan Davis, Bert Hanlon, Lew Harvey, Oscar 'Dutch' Hendrian, Al Herman, Herbert Heywood, Al Hill, Stuart Holmes, George Humbert, Don Thaddeus Kerr, Reid Kilpatrick, Arthur Loft, Charles Marsh, Wendell Niles, Jack Norton, Lee Phelps, Paul Phillips, Jack Richardson, John Ridgely, Cyril Ring, Hector Sarno, Cliff Saum, Elliott Sullivan, Billy Wayne, Ben Welden, Dick Wessel, Frank Wilcox
screenplay by Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay, Robert Rossen, based on the story The World Moves on by Mark Hellinger, music by Ray Heindorf, Heinz Roemheld, special effects by Edwin P.DuPar, Byron Haskin
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Returning home from World War I, Eddie (James Cagney) finds out that
jobs are short in supply, so eventually he becomes a cabby, sharing a car
with his best buddy Danny (Frank McHugh) ... and Eddie is blue-eyed enough
to let himself be used as an alcohol delivery boy without his knowledge in
the times of Prohibition - which promptly lands him in jail, but Panama
(Gladys George), the nightclub owner whom he was supposed to deliver the
booze to, has pity on him and pays his fine ... and suddenly sees an
opportunity knocking, and in no time, he has set up a bootlegging business
with a fleet of cabs as front - and before long, he's really rolling in
the dough. And Eddie finds a girl to love, too, in singer Jean (Priscilla
Lane), ad he uses his influence to let her sing in Panama's nightclub ...
but Jean doesn't love him, she's just tremendously grateful while somewhat
alienated by his high-rolling lifestyle. Instead she falls in love with
Eddie's honest, upright attorney Lloyd (Jffrey Lann). Eventually, Eddie
wants to muscle in on gangster Nick Brown's (Paul Kelly) territory, in
which he succeeds thanks to Brown's turncoat right hand man George
(Humphrey Bogart), an old warbuddy of his - but this all leads to a
gangwar, in which Danny is killed, George turns against Eddie, and Brown
is shot in a big shootout ... and both Lloyd and Jean leave his side to
start a new, honest life with each other. In 1929, Eddie loses
everything in the crashof the stock exchange, and he has to sell his whole
fleet of cabs (and essentially his business) to George of all people. And
Eddie is hit with yet another blow when the prohibition is lifted, and his
business (or what's left of it) quickly dries up in the process. Out of
cynism however, George, who has fallen on his feet again, has left Eddie
one cab, and now Eddie makes what little money he can as a cabbie - and
when he meets Jean again (as one of his customers) it almost breaks his
heart to see her doing well with Lloyd and their kid in a house in
suburbia. Then though George decides he has to get Lloyd killed because
he knows to much about George's shady organisation, and in her
desperation, Jean turns to Eddie to persuade him to talk George out of it
- but this tak ends in a shootout in which George is killed and Eddie is
allowed to die a hero's death on the steps of a cathedral.
The
Roaring Twenties is certainly not the best gangster film ever, nor is
it Raoul Walsh's best film - but that said, it's still pretty good
entertainment, a light-footed approach to the epic story of the rise and
fall of a gangster in stylish sets with Cagney and Bogart on top of their
game, carried by a fast paced and elegant directorial effort, in the
context of which not even the cheesy final scene seems too out of place. Recommended.
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review © by Mike Haberfelner
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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