Au service de la loi

Typical Wallace Beery feature rendered weird and beautiful by von Sternberg direction. Although only Beery gives a good performance -- slower and much more introspective than his usual Long John Silver of this era --the von Sternberg visual touches -- the odd camera angle that brings out the lines on Beery's face, or the macrame drapes that cast shadows on the juveniles -- make this a deeply disturbing movie, like Tarrantino directing an episode of Sesame Street.

Larger than life Wallace Beery is Sergeant Madden, the cop on the beat, who can solve any problem. About twenty minutes in, we jump ahead to when his son Dennis is applying to the police academy, and must learn some hard lessons. Alan Curtis plays "Dennis", and died young at 43, after surgery. Interesting note... Don Haines plays Milton; Haines enlisted early in the war, and died fighting in Africa at the young age of 23. Also look for David Gorcey (Punchy).. younger brother of the better known Leo Gorcey from the "Bowery Boys" films. In the story, Dennis is stubborn, and can't seem to get along with anyone, including members of his own family. Dennis is sweet on Eileen (Laraine Day) , the girl that the family had taken in as a baby. This was one of Day's early roles, and was only 18. Dennis gets into all kinds of trouble, and Dad (Beery) tries to get him out of it, if he can. Pretty good story. Very typical in the days of the mob and a mix of good cops and bad cops. Only 90 votes as of today. Must not be shown on Turner Classics very often. It's pretty good; hope they show it more frequently. Directed by Josef von Sternberg, who had been nominated for Oscars in 1931 1nd 1932.

I don't think that's a true crime film, but certainly a dark drama for sure. Wallace Berry gives one more terrific performance, moving, where the audience, at least me, feels very close to him, feels empathy towards him. The father son relationship is pretty well evoked in an unusual way, at least in the situation where both belong to the force. I don't remember such a scheme, nor this Josef Von Sternberg's film and it was very refreshing to watch it again. The actor playing the young cop is excellent, nearly stealing the film from Berry. A good film, good father son relation study. It deserves to be discovered again. The last minute is totally lousy, worthless, smashing the previous drama part.... Such a shame.

Wallace Beery pulls out all the stops in scene stealing and as an extra has a touch of the brogue in his speech as Sergeant Madden of the NYPD. Of course when we first meet Beery he's merely Patrolman Madden who finds a baby girl on his doorstep and brings him home to wife Fay Holden. Beery and Holden already have a boy of their own and a neighbor's kid who hangs around so much he's like one of the family.

The kids grow up to be Laraine Day, Alan Curtis, and Tom Brown respectively. Curtis is a newly minted patrolman himself fresh from the Academy and burning with ambition and now married to Day although Brown has a thing for her.

He shoots a young punk David Gorcey caught in the act of a robbery although he could have with some effort taken him alive. That whole incident shows how times have changed, today Curtis would be suspended, maybe kicked off the force for shooting an unarmed suspect. As it is he gets a leery well done, but earns the ire of local hood Marc Lawrence whose girl friend Marion Martin was Gorcey's sister.

Lawrence arranges a nice little jackpot for Curtis and I won't say any more because the plot of Sergeant Madden gets more maudlin and unbelievable as it continues.

Although the private Wallace Beery was hardly matching the lovable oafish type Beery portrayed in sound films even as a villain, Sergeant Madden is the kind of film that Beery was asked to carry strictly on the strength of that appeal. Beery carries Sergeant Madden to an average rating for me, strictly on that appeal.

This is a good movie. It's not one of the great all-time movies; it's not even one of the great all-time crime dramas. But it's a good movie. The current IMDb average of 5.9 for this movie does it a gross injustice. It deserves at least at 6.8, and maybe as high as 7.1.

The pacing of the story is good; it never drags. The camera work is good, and the atmosphere in the night scenes is good. It's a visually pleasing film.

The acting is good. Wallace Beery, who can ham it up with the best of them, could have overdone the sentimental Irish cop routine, but he restrains himself to present a well-balanced and credible character, no mere cartoon version of a New York cop. In fact, it is one of the better performances I've seen Beery give. All the other actors, in roles either major or minor, are good in their roles as well. Laraine Day shines, and Alan Curtis is very good as well. Marc Lawrence gets a larger-than-normal supporting part and does very well with it. Mary Field, who often plays domestics with only trivial speaking lines, gets a meatier role here (though it lasts only one scene), and shows she can act.

If the film has any major fault, it lies in the script. Alan Curtis does a good job (especially in the final scenes) with what he is given by the screenplay, but the origin of the chip on his character's shoulder is never really explained, and there aren't many nuances in his hard-edged character throughout most of the film. This makes it hard to sympathize with him in any way, or even to understand what Laraine Day ever saw in him. We feel more sympathy even for Marc Lawrence's gangster leader than for Curtis's angry young cop. Had Curtis's character been better fleshed out, this would have been not merely a good movie but a very good one.

To its credit, the film makes no pretensions of greatness; it never gives the impression that it is telling a more important story than it is. Its story is told in a low-key manner. Perhaps for that reason, it doesn't stand out among the movies of 1939 with their grand themes and larger-than life characters (Hunchback or Notre Dame, Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, Gunga Din, and so on).

I get the impression that this film is given a lower ranking than it deserves because fans of Josef von Sternberg were expecting something else from it. They would have liked it to be more like his earlier, highly stylized films which they consider classic. It's as if the film is being punished, not for being a bad film, but for being not Sternbergish enough. A similar thing happens with Alfred Hitchock's film Jamaica Inn, which is generally ranked very low despite the fact that it's quite a good film (though properly seen only in the restored Cohen edition); it is belittled because, stylistically, it's not Hitchcockish enough. Yet if one watches Jamaica Inn without prior expectations of what a Hitchcock film should be like -- or better still, if one watches it without realizing that it was directed by Hitchcock -- one will almost certainly enjoy it. The same is true, I submit, for Sergeant Madden.

Again, this is not a great film -- the director could have insisted on a better script, or rewritten parts himself. But it's a solid film. It was not deserving of any Academy Awards, but it is deserving of far better than a 5.9.