Dois Contra uma Cidade Inteira

With a first-rate cast, good boxing sequences, an excellent music score by Max Steiner, a smattering of romance and action sequences, this film has got to be one of James Cagney's best films. Besides, you get a chance to see Arthur Kennedy and Elia Kazan in their first film, and both are excellent. If Kazan weren't such a great director, he easily could have made a career as an actor. Be sure to notice the surprising scene where Anthony Quinn seems to force himself on Ann Sheridan, who pleads for him to stop as the scene fades. Surprising, because even an implied rape was against the strict code in 1940. I wonder how that scene got past the Hays Office.

CITY FOR CONQUEST (Warner Brothers, 1940), directed by Anatole Litvak, starring James Cagney and Ann Sheridan, is another one of many movies produced during the 1930s and 40s to represent New York City life with a realistic approach, and one of the best of its kind. Not as famous as Cagney and Sheridan's previous effort, ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938), which also featured the same street setting and tenement apartment backdrops, CITY FOR CONQUEST, which begins in 1934 in a city of seven million people, does have its strong points (the forceful acting, particularly by Cagney, with Sheridan coming a close second) and bad points (occasional heavy handiness in melodramatics), but it still makes a fine story highlighted by a well staged, but brutal prizefight sequence, and a memorable Max Steiner score.

Focusing on the ambitions of three people from the Lower East Side, Cagney stars as the self-sacrificing Danny Kenny, a truck driver who becomes a prizefighter, only to become nearly blinded in a stadium ring when double-dealing gangsters place resin powder in the gloves of his opponent; Sheridan as Peggy Nash, an over anxious girl who wants to become a professional ballroom dancer, only to become partnered with the wrong kind of guy named Murray Burns (played by the menacing Anthony Quinn); and Arthur Kennedy (in his movie debut), featured as Cagney's younger brother, Eddie, working as a piano teacher who strives on becoming a symphony composer. After the ups and downs of the three central characters are presented, the outcome results in a powerful conclusion.

The supporting cast includes Donald Crisp as Scotty, Danny's fighting manager; Frank McHugh as Mutt; George Tobias as Pinky; Jerome Cowan as Dutch; and Blanche Yurka seen briefly as Sheridan's tenement mother, Mrs. Nash. Then there is future movie director, Elia Kazan, making his movie debut as Googi. His performance is small but excellent. As mentioned before, Arthur Kennedy, another good but underrated actor, also makes his debut. Interestingly Kennedy closely resembles Cagney well enough to actually be his brother, but his Eddie character comes close to being a George Gershwin-type, especially when conducting his symphony at Carnegie Hall in the latter part of the story. Another performer who should not go unnoticed is Lee Patrick, usually cast in sophisticated character roles, and best remembered as Effie, Sam Spade's secretary in the 1941 version to THE MALTESE FALCON, playing Gladys, a floozy but good-natured chorus girl who offers the down-and-out Sheridan accommodations at her place.

One cannot help noticing character actor and playwright Frank Craven as "Old Timer" being featured THIRD in the opening and closing cast credits. He appears in only ONE brief scene in the opening segment where he happens to be walking down Delancey Street. He notices a young teen stealing two pieces of bread, catches the boy only to say, "If you must steal bread in New York (slight pause), don't get caught!" Afterwards he gives the boy one piece and takes one for himself. Old Timer is never seen or heard from again. Craven's character name of "Old Timer" isn't even heard or called out during those few minutes. What does Craven's cameo, which ranks third in the cast, have to do with the plot? After doing some research, I have come to learn that the print in circulation, both on video cassette and television presentations, is from a 1948 theatrical reissue, which excised all but one of Craven's scenes. Anyone who has ever seen his performance in OUR TOWN (United Artists, 1940), where he plays a philosopher appearing throughout the story delivering messages to his audience, will be interested to know that Craven has done the same in the original version of CITY FOR CONQUEST, which could have been a revamped production re-titled OUR CITY. In CITY FOR CONQUEST, Craven occasionally intrudes or narrates in numerous scenes to tell the camera eye about the central characters. It would be interesting to see the outlook of this restored version someday. (That someday finally took place on the night of November 12, 2007, on TCM, getting to see Frank Craven address the story to the viewers, to see the main characters of Danny, Peggy and Googi as children, Ward Bond as a cop, and other scenes not before seen since its original theatrical release).

Aside from its melodramatic storyline, CITY FOR CONQUEST features a handful of instrumental melodies, many from previous 1930s musicals, including "Lullaby of Broadway," "The Continental," "Corn Pickin'" "Garden of the Moon," "I'm Just Wild About Harry," "The Shadow Waltz," "The Words Are in My Heart," "42nd Street," "Where Were You When the Moon Came Out?" "Powder My Back for Me" and the six minute finale, "Symphony of a Great City." Many of these tunes are part of the ballroom dancing as performed by Sheridan and Quinn.

CITY FOR CONQUEST is an interesting look on New York lifestyle of long ago, which makes this worth viewing whenever aired on Turner Classic Movies. (***1/2)

The story begins in the tenements of New York, with two brothers, one an aspiring musician and the other a fighter, who already has a yen for a pretty young neighbor who is an aspiring dancer. Cut to some years later, and the boxer is James Cagney, the musician's Arthur Kennedy, and the young neighbor is Ann Sheridan. All three of them are on the way to making it in their chosen careers, but in doing so, Sheridan's character falls in love with a sleazy ballroom dancer (Anthony Quinn). Cagney makes it big in boxing in order to help fund his brother's music career, before tragedy brings the three back together.

Cagney is Cagney as ever, but Sheridan seems a little too genteel as his tenement-bred girl - although that's partly the point - and I kept wondering why they didn't pick a dancer for the part. Whenever they need a dance number, they either shoot it from the waist down or cut to a long shot. It's too bad WB didn't have Rita Hayworth under contract - she would have been ideal, and a much better fit than the role she was doing over at Columbia at that time, in Ben Hecht's Angels Over Broadway (1940). Arthur Kennedy as the musical brother doesn't make a huge impression, but it's interesting to see Elia Kazan in a small role.

It has great camerawork with a great sense of the late 30s. I didn't realize until afterwards that the great James Wong Howe had a hand in this, but it figures. It's one of those films that feels like it fell a little short of its lofty ambitions, but it's so handsome that I hardly cared.

I had the very great pleasure this Thanksgiving week of seeing one of my sentimental favorites from the good old Late Show days (nights), City for Conquest. I had not seen it in more years than I should like to remember, but, as I watched, it all came back to me. James Cagney, who has always been a great favorite of mine, plays Danny Kenney (they always seemed to give James Cagney's characters names like "Danny" or "Tommy"), who takes up boxing to finance his younger brother's music career. Sizzling Ann Sheridan is Danny's girlfriend, who has ambitions of her own in the wider world. And indeed Ann Sheridan was a wonderful dancer, and her numbers with Anthony Quinn are erotic in only the way a great dance team can be. Anthony Quinn (man, he was HOT! He looked a lot like Rudolph Valentino) plays a slime ball who fills Peggy's ears with what she wants to hear. They can be a sensational dance team as "Maurice and Margalo" and conquer the world. Of course, she winds up breaking Danny's heart and Danny winds up blind. Soap opera stuff, to be sure, but it WORKS! I believe I once read that Warner Brothers hired a professional boxer to coach James Cagney in this role. Not that he needed much coaching, considering his Hell's Kitchen background. The coach was impressed with Cagney and asked him where he got those moves. "I'm a hoofer," Cagney replied. In any case, if you can avoid bawling your eyes out at the end of City for Conquest," you are stronger than I am! A must-see!

James Cagney, Arthur Kennedy and Ann Sheridan all live in the "City for Conquest" - New York, that is - in this 1940 film directed by Anatole Litvak and also starring Frank McHugh, Donald Crisp, Anthony Quinn and - yes, Elia Kazan.

Cagney and Kennedy are the Kenny Brothers, Danny and Eddie. Danny is a truck driver in love with Peg, his childhood sweetheart. He has two dreams - Peg and his brother's composing career. When he's discovered by a fight manager (Crisp), Danny becomes a fighter for the money.

The ambitious Peg has her eyes on fame and fortune and pairs up with a brutish but equally ambitious dancer, played with force by Anthony Quinn. Eddie, meanwhile, is discovered not for his magnificent composition "City for Conquest" but for his Broadway musical capabilities.

When he realizes he's losing Peg, Danny, who is being brought up gradually into the bigger fights, demands to go for a big purse that will give him the championship - and, he thinks, Peg.

Thanks to a crooked mobster, the fight nearly destroys Danny and he has to give up fighting. Down but not out, he insists that Eddie still pursue his dream of a classical career.

This is a good movie that tugs at the heartstrings, very melodramatic, with excellent acting all around. Cagney is wonderful and sympathetic as a simple, loving man who takes what life gives him; Crisp gives a fine performance as his caring fight manager.

Ann Sheridan, always an earthier, tougher version of Rita Hayworth, is marvelous as a young woman who, though she loves Danny, can't fight the lure of the glamor and fame offered by her dance partnership.

Kazan, in a small role as a gangster, is great, though his contributions as a director are far more valuable than what he might have given film history as an actor.

The standout for me was one of the most brilliant and underrated actors of our time, Arthur Kennedy. Kennedy enjoyed a wonderful career in film and on stage in a variety of roles, but because he wasn't a true leading man and not a Warners "tough guy" like Cagney, Robinson, or Bogart who could graduate into lead roles, he toiled as a supporting actor, earning no less than 5 Oscar nominations.

Here he is young and good-looking, and his performance is passionate without being maudlin. Surely there wasn't a dry eye in any movie house after the speech he gives about his brother the night his symphony (very much modeled on "Rhapsody in Blue") debuts. Truly a great treasure, and he was discovered by James Cagney, who knew talent when he saw it.

A heartfelt movie, and you'll need that box of tissues nearby. See it and celebrate the good old days of the rough streets of New York and movies about the common man and dreams coming true.