La ciudad siniestra

This film starts out rather implausibly. Sailor Bat Morgan (James Cagney) wanders into a Barbary Coast saloon and almost gets shanghaied by a trio dedicated to that business. He does manage to escape and is helped by a kindly Jewish tailor (George E. Stone as Sully Green). What's rather implausible is that Sully basically has to teach a sailor that has docked in the port of San Francisco what shanghaiing is and that the Barbary Coast is dangerous. Really? A seasoned sailor docking in San Francisco has never heard of the Barbary Coast or shanghaiing or why it is profitable for criminals? You'd think Bat Morgan was a common tourist from the Midwest with a defective GPS. What happens next was a little off-putting for a Cagney fan like myself. Naturally, Cagney's character decides to go back to the bar and teach those three thugs a lesson. How he did it left a bad taste in my mouth. Bat shanghais the shanghai-er as he is getting ready to take yet another unconscious victim to a ship. But he also shanghais the poor unconscious slob that was just a victim like he had been a couple of hours ago! Now I'm prepared to see Cagney's character rough up and victimize fellow bad guys in a film, but he usually shied away from making victims of innocent bystanders.

At this point the film makes a distinctive turn from where it's been going the first 15 or 20 minutes and becomes less surprising and more of a conventional action picture. Bat Morgan - who never goes back to his ship - begins to make his fortune on the Barbary Coast by more conventional methods. At first he works for Barbary Coast saloon proprietor Paul Morra (Ricardo Cortez), then he works his way up by enlarging the take of corrupt San Francisco officials, and uses his part of the pot to build an upscale establishment on the Barbary Coast himself.

Meanwhile, the beautiful owner of a newspaper dedicated to wiping out corruption (Margaret Lindsay as Jean) enlists an editor to help her in her goal of cleaning up The Coast and outing the corrupt officials that protect it. Donald Woods plays the honest editor she hired who never has a chance with Jean once Cagney's Bat Morgan gets a look at her and starts batting his baby blues. So here you have a corrupt guy and a beautiful classy girl dedicated to wiping out corruption falling in love. Rather predictable complications ensue.

High points of this production are, most obviously James Cagney, George E. Stone in an endearing role as Cagney's mild mannered and loyal friend the tailor, and Fred Kohler in a minor role as the aptly named Shanghai Duck who looks like he hasn't bathed in a month of Sundays. Ricardo Cortez gives an overly restrained performance as Barbary Coast big shot Paul Morra, and Lili Damata is wasted here as his wife. Unexpected is the viewpoint that a mob on horseback is lawlessness, but a mob sitting down in a large room is an acceptable form of government, and that common criminals going to the opera is an unspeakable breach of etiquette. Watch the film to see what I'm talking about.

This one is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition, largely made so because studios had to turn to period pieces like this one immediately after the production code took effect in order to blunt the interference from the censors without really knowing what to do with the material.

Frisco Kid (1935)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The Barbary Coast in San Francisco is the setting in this story of Bat Morgan (James Cagney), the man who would become the countries first racketeer. This is a decent little film but there's not enough energy to keep things moving as well as it should. Cagney, with a funky little haircut, is in good form but this is certainly not one of his greatest roles. The supporting cast is in good form and includes Margaret Lindsay, Ricardo Cortez, Donald Woods and George E. Stone. Cortez steals the show as the top guy in town but Stone adds some very good comic relief as Cagney's buddy. The highlight of the film is a terrific fight sequence between Cagney and a large man with a hook for a hand. The final twenty minutes deal with the city getting tired of the thugs and deciding to take the law into its own hands. We get another mob scene where they want to hang the bad men and this here is where the film should have taken off but things stay pretty bland and never get too exciting.

I don't understand why this film has low ratings. It is simply great. I've always been a huge Cagney fan. And I'm not partial nor do I play favorites when it comes to a good film. Thus- my simple, honest, basic review....

You will not get bored. You will be hooked into the movie from the start and you will truly appreciate the work that went into this movie. The idea of it is pretty unique and it was not exactly easy to make a film set in such a time. 1850's. Imagine that. But don't be put off. There is a 1930s appeal. And you can see this being made in our modern times. There is also a gritty edge to the plot. Cagney is a sailor who was robbed and left for dead. He brilliantly comes back with a smart vengeance. And the other characters keep you interested as well.

I don't want to give too much away, but you will be on Cagney's side right from the start and not just because you love the guy. The story is not lame and overly simple. The actors all pulled together and made this wonderful.

And Cagney is dynamite. As expected.

It's 1854 San Francisco, the wickedest city in the world. Bat Morgan (James Cagney) walks into a saloon and gets shanghaied. He barely escapes. He turns the table on Shanghai Duck and starts his rise from the city's Barbary Coast.

I do love James Cagney but I don't necessarily love Bat Morgan. He's a cocky son-of-a-gun. At the start, he's the underdog and that's very compelling. It's rough and tumble. That would have been great if it stayed that way. His rise is too smooth until he faces some resistance from the father. The slower middle stalls the movie. This is fine but it's not the best.

Terrible title for a watchable Cagney vehicle, which seems like so many of his early films, to move at breakneck speed. Like so many of his major roles, there's a duality at play, with his Bat Morgan character initially winning viewer sympathy by fighting back against bullying gangsters in San Francisco's notorious "Barbary Coast" quarter and loyally looking out for his Jewish sidekick, only to be seduced by the lure of power and money to rise to the top of the greasy pole by being bigger and badder than the competition and getting on-side with the corrupt big-time politician Big Jim Daley.

There's love interest too in the prim and proper person of Margaret Lindsay the managing editor of the crusading local paper, whose handsome daily editor Donald Woods serves as uneasy ally, love rival and straight-and-narrow example to Cagney, before invoking one of a series of murdered decent citizens which causes the law-abiding majority to turn to vigilantism in a literally riotous finish with Cagney naturally rejecting the dark-side and even getting the girl.

How true the story here is to the growing pains of the real San Francisco, will have to wait until my next visit to the reference library, but the story suffers from Cagney's character whose rise and fall and rise again is too unlikely to seem credible. You feel a better, more straight-forward film would have concentrated on the zealous editor's story rather than Cagney's flawed hero. There also seem to be just too many characters, incidents and plot developments telescoped into the film's short playing time which the editing can't bring together coherently.

For once I couldn't believe enough in Cagney's character and felt he gives an untypically mixed performance, although the problem here could be in the writing. Better are Lindsay as the posh proprietor who unconvincingly crosses the tracks for Cagney and Woods as the socially conscious but doomed editor Ford. The mob-scene finale calls for the marshaling of large crowds of actors which is accomplished believably and effectively, but in the end, the all-loose-ends-tied up optimistic ending let's down the preceding drama.

For me this was a welcome chance to see the young Cagney in a rarely-screened film. To be fair it's just too fast-paced to really hang together though, better roles, better written and to be honest, better acted, lay ahead for him.