La foule hurle

...instead it mainly confounds! Cagney did not like many of these early programmers that he got stuck in over at Warner Brothers. He felt them a waste. I would tend to disagree with him in most cases, but this time he was somewhat right.

Cagney plays top line race car driver Joe Greer. He's sleeping with and really actually living with Lee Merrick (Anne Dvorak), plus he likes the booze. Cagney is taking a train to his home town and treats Lee like a tell-tale whiskey bottle. She has to be stowed away along with his booze or else his virginal green kid brother, Eddie, will somehow be corrupted by her. Nothing makes a girl feel like a tramp more than being treated like one. Plus, to add insult to insult, Joe thinks that any girl that is a friend of Lee's must be a tramp just because she's Lee's friend after all. What a jerk.

During his trip home, Joe finds out Eddie (Eric Linden) has been trying his hand at racing himself, and in the end Joe decides to take Eddie under his wing and introduce him to professional racing. Well, this means that Lee can't travel around with Joe anymore, and he basically puts her in cold storage - seeming to continue to support her, but staying away. Lee convinces her friend, Anne (Joan Blondell) to break Eddie's heart and corrupt him so she can hurt Joe through Eddie.

Well, life is what happens when you're making plans, and Anne and Eddie actually fall for each other, as in wanting to get married, something Joe never offered Lee. When Joe finds out that his kid brother has been corrupted by Anne, he tells her to lay off, but both Eddie and Anne tell Joe to kiss off. The topper is when Joe finds out that Lee arranged the whole thing and Joe promises revenge for all concerned out on the racetrack. These things never end well.

A supporting character through this whole thing has been race car driver "Spud" (Frank McHugh). He's a nice guy, sober, everybody likes him, and he has an adoring wife and lovely kids. His baby's shoes are his good luck charm when he drives. So you just know in this rather obvious film you are waiting for two things - for Joe to wise up and eat a little humble pie and also for Spud to become mashed potatoes.

I'll let you watch and see how this all turns out, but I think you'll see the ending from a mile away. The question I was left with was, what DOES Anne see in Eddie? He really projects no personality whatsoever, and though Eric Linden is actually just three years younger than Joan Blondell, the age difference between the characters seems much larger than that. It is not that Joan seems old, not at all. It's just that Eric Linden seems so two-dimensional. Even when Anne is trying to explain her love of Eddie to Lee, all she can ever say is "oh that kid".

I'd recommend this one just to see that the success of some of Warner Brothers' precodes and early programmers lay in their talented cast, not in the script. This is a good example of that.

Racing has been portrayed so well many times in film and television and always makes for an interesting setting and subject. Howard Hawks was a great director and a versatile one, taking on a good deal of genres and excelling at most (especially Westerns and screwball comedy). Another big reason for wanting to see 'The Crowd Roars' was the cast, James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak and Frank McHugh could always be counted upon to make anything better.

The cast are one of the main redeeming qualities of 'The Crowd Roars' and there is a good deal to enjoy in the dialogue and the choreography of the race scenes. Sadly, 'The Crowd Roars' did not strike me as a great film and Hawks certainly did far better films, if anything this is a lesser effort for him. If the film had a better story, didn't look as cheap and didn't have a character that made so little impact in such a jarring way, it would have fared better.

Despite having a truly loathsome character, Cagney is a knockout and has cocky charisma and intensity galore. To me he didn't seem uninterested at all. Blondell is sassy and charming in usual Blondell style, she was no stranger to this type of role and always did it well, and Dvorak is affecting. McHugh provides colourful support as one of the more likeable characters. While having reservations with the production values overall, the racing is thrillingly choreographed and excites, quite bold for back then too. The tragedy did bring a lump to my throat.

Furthermore 'The Crowd Roars' does go at an energetic pace and has snappy, hard-boiled dialogue on the whole. Hawks' direction does have moments of brilliance.

He is sadly not always in full control of his material however, and there are a few too many melodramatic scenes that lack the urgency of the racing where he doesn't fare very well stopping the drama from getting over the top. The subplot with Eddie and Ann doesn't really add very much and feels like padding. Did find the chemistry between Blondell and Eddie Linden anaemic and Linden not only lacks any kind of charisma but also injects very little personality in a sketchy role.

Sadly have to agree with some too that the production values are not the best. The studio rear projections are very cheap and over-obvious and while the choreography of the racing excites the racetrack shots feel very clumsily incorporated and could have been a lot more subtle with the editing.

In summary, worth a look but not a must recommend. 6/10

THE CROWD ROARS (Warner Brothers, 1932), directed by Howard Hawks, is a fast-pace drama revolving around auto racing at the Indianapolis speedway as indicated prior to the opening credits with racing cars speeding down the track as one goes out of control, causing the crowd at the grand stand to rise from their seats and, hence the title, the crowd roars! Starring James Cagney, whose gangster/tough guy image emerged with his ground breaking title role as THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), continues to play a tough guy, this time from behind the wheel aiming for the finish line.

The story, written by its director, with screen adaptation by Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Seton I. Miller and Niven Bush, finds Joe Greer (James Cagney), a three time Indianapolis driving champion, returning to his home town by train to meet with his kid brother, Eddie (Eric Linden) and Pop (Guy Kibbee), whom he hasn't seen in four years. Although loved by his mistress, Lee Merrick (Ann Dvorak - in her Warner Brothers debut), and much to her resentment, Joe intends on keeping their relationship a secret. However, Eddie, who hero worships Joe, wants to be a race car driver just like him. At first Joe tries to discourage him, but eventually paves the way for him in the racing game. Their relationship as brothers falters when Eddie encounters Lee's best friend, Ann Scott (Joan Blondell), a woman with a reputation. Going against Joe's orders, Ann goes after Eddie in spite, but instead, falls in love and marries him. During one of their races, Spud Connors (Frank McHugh), Joe's relief driver and best friend, tries to prevent the feuding brothers from going against each other on the track by driving between them, but is killed in the process, causing Joe to hit the skids while Eddie takes Joe's former title as championship racer. Regardless of how he put her aside, Lee makes every effort to locate Joe, who has disappeared from view.

Also appearing in the cast are Charlotte Merriam (Ruth Connors); Ronnie Cosbey (Mike Connors); and Edward McWade (Tom Beal), whose roles go without credit. Guy Kibbee, who seems to have appeared in every Warner Brothers production at that time, is seen only during the film's initial 10 minutes, by which then his Pop Greer character drifts out of the story and never seen or mentioned again.

THE CROWD ROARS has the great distinction for having its racing scenes filmed on location at Indianapolis at Ventura and Ascot race tracks rather than rear projection from inside of the studio, as well as having actual auto drivers, William Arnold, Ralph Hepburn, Leo Nomis, Stubby Stubblefield and Shorty Cantlon, appearing briefly as themselves, some whose scenes are handicapped by their weak acting. As much as the leading actors work well together, particularly the conceded Cagney along with the weakling kid brother-type, Linden. it seems a pity that the individual dramatic scenes enacted by Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell were not handled on a more natural or convincing level. Their emotional screeching outbursts (Blondell's repeated lines to Cagney, "Tell him!") weakens what what might emerged as one of the film's strong points. This sort of "over-the-top" acting might have been common practice at the time, considering how director Hawks worked the same method on Dvorak's emotions opposite Paul Muni in the crime drama, SCARFACE (United Artists, 1932). Later in 1932, Dvorak appeared in possibly her finest performance captured on film in THREE ON A MATCH opposite Joan Blondell, while Blondell and Linden would re-team again in the rarely seen BIG CITY BLUES, where Linden was the central character.

In 1938, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced a film titled THE CROWD ROARS starring Robert Taylor and Maureen O'Sullivan, which was not a remake but another well made sports theme revolving around professional boxing. However, Warners did remake its own CROWD ROARS as INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY (1939) starring Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, Gale Page, John Payne in the Cagney, Blondell, Dvorak and Linden roles, with Frank McHugh playing "Spud" Connors once again. Comparing both films, whenever presented on Turner Classic Movies, the remake, being 15 minutes longer than the original's 70 minute length, plays better acting wise by its actresses, though the earlier version is better served due to the charisma of Cagney, which explains why the original played longer on commercial television in the New York City area up to the mid 1980s than INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY, which ceased TV circulation around the late 1960s. Besides some good racing sequences and cast of familiar Warner Brothers stock players, THE CROWD ROARS is rather ordinary material made good by Cagney's dynamic appeal. (***)

James Cagney must have felt darned silly greasing up, donning goggles, climbing into a race car, and making dumb faces while a rear-projection Indy 500 played behind him. He's an ace driver, a daredevil on the track and a cocky alpha male, mistreating his unconditionally supportive girlfriend and attempting to steer his uninteresting younger brother away from a racing career. The script's practically a textbook of genre cliches, from the best buddy whose death-on-wheels gives our hero a guilt complex to the sibling rivalry that is mysteriously resolved, offscreen, in the last reel. Cagney's justifiably celebrated skill and charm can't make us care about this misogynistic, unlikeable blowhard, nor can it make his rapid descent into drink, vagrancy, and hunger (or equally rapid rise back to the Indy) credible. Howard Hawks was already making fast-paced, psychologically sound male-bonding flicks, but even he's flummoxed by the hoary melodramatics of this one. The ladies have little to do but play weepy-loyal (Ann Dvorak) and sarcastic-loyal (Joan Blondell), but they come off best.

As suggested in another review there was probably stuff left on the cutting room floor that would have filled in some holes in the plot. Still I disagree that we don't get the gist of this gripping melodrama or that the racing scenes aren't great. Cagney is a hard-boiled champion Indy driver, who goes a little psycho when his younger brother wants to follow in his footsteps. Suddenly, the girlfriend who loves him isn't good enough and her friend is a tramp. Before you can say "You dirty rat!", the two brothers are alienated and the girl is broken-hearted. This sets up a great rivalry on the track and some heated racing scenes.

I beg to differ with the fussy earlier reviewer who lamented that the racing scenes were over edited. I found these scenes riveting and brilliant. Moreover, they convey a strong taste of a brand of racing long past where death was not so rare. They also show us film of some of the great cars of bygone days in action. Nowadays we are jaded with television cameras on board most high level events. But this footage rivals the modern one for pace and context with the advantage of placing us in a wilder sport. The track is more dangerous, the cars more primitive and of course modern racing is much more civilized.

However, the character Cagney plays is remarkably like many modern day racing greats living and dead due to their daring ways. maybe in their childhood they saw Cagney in this flick.