Voici la marine !

Metal worker James Cagney is humiliated by naval officer Pat O'Brien. So he joins the Navy to get even with him. Naturally. Then he falls in love with Pat's sister, only he doesn't know it's Pat's sister. Their romance may be short-lived, however, because Jimmy and Pat can't stand one another.

Cagney and O'Brien made a lot of these types of movies. This was the first and one of the best. Usually Jimmy's the cocky jerk and Pat's the nice guy. That's sort of the case here, too, but I actually found myself liking Cagney more than O'Brien. He's fun and likable, even if he's not always right. Pat, on the other hand, is a sour puss throughout the movie. Gloria Stuart plays O'Brien's sister who Cagney falls in love with. She's very pretty and does a fine job in a part that requires very little. Historically important for being partially filmed on board the USS Arizona, which was destroyed at Pearl Harbor seven years later. Also some footage of the dirigible USS Macon, which crashed the year after this film was released. It's a fun movie that fans of the stars will certainly enjoy. The climax is implausible but exciting. There is a blackface gag that will set some today back on their heels, so be prepared for that.

Here Comes the Navy (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Standard action from Warner about a cocky loudmouth (James Cagney) who joins the Navy so that he can get even with a Captain (Pat O'Brien) but Cagney ends up falling in love with his sister (Gloria Stuart). This film starts off with a great bang but as the movie goes along things become quite predictable and rather flat. The first part of the movie is great with a lot of fighting and insults being thrown by Cagney. Needless to say Cagney is very energetic and delivers another fine performance. His relationship with Stuart is also handled very well as the two actors have a lot of chemistry together. O'Brien is in good form as well and he and Cagney do their magic unlike any other duo. The biggest problem comes in the middle where the story pretty much gets weighted down by the familiar bit where the cocky Cagney must learn what it means to be a normal human being and shut his mouth up before it gets him in real trouble. The action scene at the end is very nice as is the funny ending. The most shocking scene comes when Cagney sneaks off the boat in blackface.

Cagney was great as a stubborn smart aleck, and that is what the James Cagney had a great manner of getting the girl, whether it be Bette Davis in THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. (1941) or Gloria Stuart in HERE COMES THE NAVY (1934).

In HERE COMES THE NAVY, Chesty O'Conner (Cagney) joins the navy simply to have a shot at a rematch brawl with naval officer Biff Martin (Pat O'Brien). On board, he wants to take O'Brien's girl who turns out to be his sister (Stuart). He befriends Droopy Mullins, a sidekick type splendidly played by Frank McHugh.

This was a delightful film, a must for fans of Cagney's humor. And for navy buffs who like to note the service between the world wars, as the Department of the Navy is cited as cooperating in this film.

Oh, and my wife reminds me to point out that there is a blimp in this picture. It is dated to that extent, but its themes and comedy are always applicable. (The blackface scene being the notable exception, but as such attitudes were very present in yesterday's Hollywood, we must bit our lips and let them pass. In this film, the actual African American characters look at Cagney in blackface as if he were goofy. They, too, let it pass.)

With the birth of the production code, the fun pre-code frolics of Cagney and Joan Blondell were at an end. Thus Warner Brothers came up with a new dynamic screen team - James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. This is the first of the films they did together. Prior to the production code, O'Brien often played the same kind of roles that Cagney played - the fast-talking smart guy with big ideas and a big dose of attitude. Since you can't have two of these in the same picture, O'Brien was generally promoted to being the more traditionally respectable of the two in their films together, and such is the case here.

The film starts with construction worker Chesty O'Conner (James Cagney) and naval officer Biff Martin (Pat O'Brien) trading at first verbal barbs and then punches. Chesty gets fired from his job because of the time he takes off recovering from the fight, and decides to go another round with Biff. Unfortunately, Biff's ship has put out to sea, so Chesty thinks the solution is to join the navy and get assigned to Biff's ship. He actually does wind up on Biff's ship, but soon learns he can't take to punching out officers whenever the mood strikes him. To complicate matters, Chesty takes a shine to Biff's sister, Dorothy (Gloria Stuart), and this just inflames matters more as Biff wants his sister to have nothing to do with Chesty. Warner contract player Frank McHugh provides the comic relief as Droopy Mullins, Chesty's stalwart friend and shipmate.

The film works better than most made right after the production code, primarily because the teaming of Cagney and O'Brien worked so well. By turning down the volume a bit on O'Brien's screen sauciness and turning up the volume on Cagney's, the two play off of each other's dynamism perfectly. This film is also interesting for historical reasons - it was filmed on and around the U.S.S. Arizona, one of the ships that sank at Pearl Harbor seven years after this film was made.

"That's my ship, the Arizona", says Pat O'Brien in the very first line of dialogue in this 1934 Warner Brothers feature. Indeed, much of this motion picture was filmed aboard the famous battleship that is now a national monument on the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

Another prominent feature of "Here Comes The Navy" is the USS Macon, the U.S. Navy's last dirigible. If the elderly battleship USS Arizona was a leftover from World War I, the USS Macon represented the cutting edge of technology in 1934, much as the Space Shuttle does today. The giant airship crashed into the Pacific Ocean less than a year after this film was produced, fortunately, with the loss of only two of her 100 crew members. Although the service continued to operate much smaller and less expensive non-rigid blimps for many years, the loss of the USS Macon put an end to the Navy's rigid airship program. There can be little doubt that many of the USS Macon's crewmen seen in this movie were still aboard at the time of the crash.

Of course, the principal feature of "Here Comes The Navy" is the crackling byplay between perennial rival/buddies James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, both of whom were at the top of their form here. As usual, Cagney plays the brash wise-guy while O'Brien is the steady, authority figure bent on channeling Cagney's energy into the right direction. It is a formula they were to repeat in several more movies, most famously in "Angels With Dirty Faces".

Caught between Cagney and O'Brien is Gloria Stewart. This was the same Gloria Stewart who would later be featured in the 1997 version of "Titanic". Stuart did a reasonable job here, even though she was inevitably upstaged by her two dynamic co-stars. But then, Cagney and O'Brien could easily steal scenes from anybody.

"Here Comes The Navy" is a treat for Cagney fans (and there are still plenty of those out there). It is equally a treat for history buffs. Originally intended as a showcase for the contemporary Navy, the movie is now a time capsule of the service in a bygone era.