Cidade Sinistra

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.

I doubt that any other film of the time had as many boisterous crowd or mob scenes as this one. So Cagney better be a human dynamo or he'll be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, whether it's crowds in big watering holes or lynch mobs hurtling down streets. It's Gold Rush Frisco of the 1850's. On the low end of town is the Barbary Coast, about as sinful and noisy as waterfronts get. On the high end of town are the swells and well-dressed folks, and by golly, never the twains shall meet. That is, until Cagney's ambitious low-born Bat Morgan schemes his way into both worlds and criminally networks them. Seems he's good at everything, except winning the hand of the classy Miss Barrat (Lindsey) who won't buck the social distance lying between them. So what will happen once his contrived empire starts to sprout holes.

The flick's typical WB from the period—fast, tough, and not too sentimental. Cagney's Cagney, a pint-sized dynamo if ever there was one. He's about as dominating a character as Hollywood has had and perfect for the part. The plot-line itself is not too plausible, but the spectacle does compensate. I wish more time was spent on the details of Bat's scheming and social climbing. After all, that was Cagney's movie appeal-- his lower class drive against all odds.

On the other hand, catch Ricardo Cortez as the one truly slick crook of the bunch. But what about Solly's (Stone) relationship with the domineering Bat. They're buddies, sure, but catch Solly's expressions when the two get close to one another. Too bad about the facile ending which is typical Hollywood of the Code period. Had the movie been made a pre-Code two years earlier, I wonder if the ending would have been the same.

All in all, the storyline is pretty disjointed, really needing a longer runtime for its networking and class themes to develop. There's also the anti-lynching element that doesn't really grieve— after all, the victims are hardly innocent. However, it's really crowd atmospherics and Cagney, that's worth catching up with. Anyway, I expect every extra in Hollywood got a welcome WB payday, along with a chance to shout their lungs out.

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.

Mediocre Warner Bros. period piece which goes off to a good start, but is hampered by a predictable narrative, an unfocused storyline and a lack of exciting moments, not to mention Jimmy's terrible hairdo in the later stages.

The picturesque Barbary Coast setting is a plus, though, and this one's the first movie I've seen, that features a lynch mob whose anger you actually understand (though the people are portrayed just as sheepishly dumb as always.)

Not Cagney's best hour, to be sure.

5 out of 10 hooked hands

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.