Au Seuil de l'Enfer

This was better than I had expected. Maybe not quite up there with Public Enemy and the original Scarface, but not that far behind.

The acting is pretty good for an early talkie. Cagney is great as usual as the head gangster's top henchman. Lew Ayres acts well as the head guy, "the Napoleon of crime", although he's perhaps a little too cleancut looking for the role.

The story is good, and rather dark. Mobster Louie Ricarno, after uniting all the gangs in Chicago under one organization, tries to quit crime. But things fall apart in his absence, and he's forced to return for purposes of revenge. The ending is nicely grim and while there might be enough of a "crime doesn't pay" moral to keep the censors happy it doesn't rub it in your face. There's some good gangster violence along the way.- a number of well-done hits, and an over- the-top scene that resembles a full-scale battle.

Two other things struck me as memorable: The adulterous relationship between Cagney and his boss' wife. At one point, she takes off her wedding ring, and then they "go somewhere".

The police captain, O'Grady, is a rather ruthless character. He blackmails Cagney into a false confession for a crime he didn't commit, by threatening to tell Ayres about his affair with Ayres's wife! Later, he lets Ayres's rivals bump him off, rather than prosecute him and risk an acquittal. It also is implied that O'Grady's rejection of bribes is more the exception than the rule among police officials.

It pays to watch this movie closely, as there is a lot that is implied and innuendoed.

This pre-Code gangster movie is interesting primarily because of James Cagney, who is in a supporting role, that of a gangster's right-hand man. His boss is played somewhat improbably by 21- year-old Lew Ayres, who is hard to believe as he threatens rival gang members to fall in line under his authority. However, fall in line they do, that is, until Ayres decides he's had enough and decides to retire. (Yes, the pretty boy baby-face had had enough of the game, when it looks like he hasn't started shaving) When he's gone, all hell breaks loose for reasons we can't really fathom, prompting them to attempt to reel him back in by kidnapping his kid brother, who is away at a military school.

Ayres is one of the casting issues; the other is the policeman played by Robert Elliott, who is far too lethargic as he delivers his lines. The script is actually pretty good, and there are some lines that are wry and just perfect for the genre and time period. The ending is drawn out, however, and it's too bad the story surrounding the love interest (played well by Dorothy Matthews) who marries Ayres but secretly loves Cagney isn't expanded on, though the scene where she coyly slips off her wedding ring to encourage him is nice. The movie hits you over the head with an anti-crime message, but as you think about the actions of the police officer, coercing statements and selectively deciding who to protect, you have to wonder how effective this message was. Anyway, the net of all of this is a reasonably entertaining movie, but nothing to write home about.

This was only Cagney's 2nd movie, just before a string of movies the following year which would cement him as a star, most notably, The Public Enemy, and he's such a natural with great screen presence. As a footnote, I found it ironic that while Ayres in the movie lauds Napoleon, his brother's military training, and war in general, Ayres in real life was a conscientious objector during WWII, making him very unpopular at the time, though he served with honor in the medical corps instead.

... even though many people complain that the role should have gone to Cagney. Ayres' baby-faced good looks and polished exterior were supposed to clash with the reality of the gangster that he was - that is part of the whole point of the film.

Ayres plays Louie Ricarno, a gangster who has decided to take the warring gangs of the city and run them like departments of a corporation of which he, of course, is president. In spite of some beefing by the other gangsters at first, in the long run this ends the in-fighting and all the gangsters make more money in the bootleg booze business and like the arrangement. Ricarno makes more money than any of them and this enables him to marry his dream-girl, retire, and live the life of a gentleman in Florida. At something like the tender age of 25 he is even writing his memoirs. However, he has two problems. First, you can take the girl out of the speak-easy (his wife) but you can't take the speak-easy out of the girl. Secondly, once Louie is retired, the same old in-fighting starts up again among the gangsters he left behind and they yearn for Louie to return and restore order. When he refuses, a couple of the gangsters cook up a plan to force him to return that goes horribly wrong and ends up killing someone close to Louie. Full of vengeance, Louie does return home, but not to restore order.

Cagney here has a minor role as right hand man to Louie and one-time boyfriend of Louie's now bored wife Doris. He's perfect in the role since his openly wise-guy exterior is in sharp contrast to Ayres' gee-whiz personna, in spite of the fact that they are equally violent.

Louie is a sympathetic character in many ways. He isn't someone who just picked crime as a career. Instead he grew up in poverty, lost his parents at a young age, lost two siblings to typhoid from bad milk, and just doesn't know any other way to live than dog eat dog. This doesn't excuse what he does, but it is something of an explanation. In this sense this film is ahead of its time in complexity. Also interesting is Louie's almost-friendship with Captain Pat O'Grady, the cop that is determined to get Louie and his gang off the street once and for all.

Fine early talkie that belongs along side Little Caesar and The Public Enemy as the gangster films that set the rules for the genre. Unlike those films however this film gives us a smart gangster who tries to get out while on top only to be dragged back in.

A pretty good crime drama of its time, on a par with PUBLIC ENEMY, LITTLE CEASAR, and others of the genre,good acting, too.Excellent acting by a very young Lew Ayres, an up-and-coming yet unknown James Cagney, here listed way down in the cast of players as a secondary, and I particularly enjoyed the fine characterization by pre-Dracula Dwight Frye. Much better than the common, cheesy melodramas of the period,this one holds the interest better due to its inferences and unseen sub-plots, an early gem by director Archie Mayo, ahead of its time for its imaginative storyline, and great scene shots, a captivating film as a whole simply for standing out among the rest! Watch this one, it's very good!!