Angels with Dirty Faces [Blu-ray]

Director: Michael Curtiz

Overview

Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) and Jerry Connelly (Pat O'Brien) grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood. Rocky becomes a hero to a gang of teenaged boys (played by Dead End Kids Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Bobby Jordan and Bernard Punsley). Father Jerry despairs at this, asking Rocky to lay off so he can keep the kids on the straight and narrow. Then Rocky's crooked business associates George Bancroft and Humphrey Bogart attempt to end Father Jerry's radio campaign against the rackets by killing the priest. Rocky (whose cynical outlook on life has been softened by his romance with true-blue Anne Sheridan) shoots them down and takes it on the lam. Arrested and convicted of murder, Rocky sits smugly on death row, fully intending to go to the chair with a smile on his face. A few moments before the execution, Father Jerry pleads with Rocky to "turn yellow" so that the tenement kids will despise his memory.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/07/2021
UPC:	0883929778072
Original Release:	1938
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Language:	English
Time:	1:37:00
Sales rank:	4,878

Editorial Reviews

Just as MGM made the best musicals and Universal the best horror films, Warner Bros. turned out the finest gangster movies, virtually inventing the genre with 1930’s Little Caesar and creating its apotheosis in Angels with Dirty Faces. This masterful melodrama, employing rapid pacing, crackling dialogue, and violent action in the typical Warner manner, incorporates virtually all the mob-movie conventions then prevalent in Hollywood. Yet, thanks to the facile direction of stylistic chameleon Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), these conventions seem remarkably fresh and vibrant. James Cagney is in top form as the cocky hoodlum who returns to the old neighborhood and renews his friendship with boyhood chum Pat O’Brien, who’s now a no-nonsense priest trying to discourage a gang of lovable ruffians -- played by the Dead End Kids -- from embarking on lives of crime. Cagney eventually takes up with former classmate Ann Sheridan, who fails to dissuade him from working with vicious racketeer Humphrey Bogart -- a perilous partnership that can only end in death for one or both of them. Filmed entirely on the back lot and peopled with familiar '30s character actors, Angels is the quintessential gangster movie: a product of studio artifice bearing little resemblance to reality but jam-packed with the entertainment values that made Warner’s crime dramas irresistible to Depression-era audiences. Since Angels has a little of everything -- comedy, romance, suspense, and action, in addition to the charismatic presences of Cagney, Bogart, and O’Brien -- its appeal remains undiminished to this day.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

Young viewers unfamiliar with 1930s era gangster melodramas might think that this classic is full of well-worn clichés, but Angels With Dirty Faces is the kind of film that brews up the bromides for others to dispense. Decades of homage, satire, and straight-up rip-offs have ensured generations of folks who have never seen a James Cagney film but always recognize an impersonation ("You dirty rat!"). Angels With Dirty Faces has aged well, still delivering plenty of excitement and hard-boiled action alongside its touches of hokum: the kindly priest of the ghetto parish, the cold killer with a soft spot for kids, and the long-suffering neighborhood girl who loves them both. The cast is packed with future icons at work. A pre-legend Humphrey Bogart plays against type as a conniving, cowardly lawyer, still three years away from The Maltese Falcon, and four years from his defining role in Casablanca (also helmed by Angels director Michael Curtiz). Pat O'Brien had made several films with Cagney prior to Angels in which he often served as his cast mate's foil, but this is the first time O'Brien played a priest, a persona he'd be associated with for years to come. The Dead End Kids didn't premiere with Angels, but they're still in their prime, too raw and tough here to be full-fledged comic relief; it would be a few years before their scrappy personas aged into buffoonery as the Bowery Boys. Then there's Cagney, at the height of his firebrand power, swaggering and sneering with charisma to burn. One never doubts that Cagney could survive a swarm of bullets in the climactic gunfight, as he wages a one-man war against both cops and crooks. Angels With Dirty Faces seems to acknowledge its star's glamour and the possibility of his gangster image celebrated and worshipped by impressionable youth. When Father Jerry asks Rocky Sullivan to feign cowardice as he walks to the electric chair, it's to prevent the naïve Dead End Kids from hailing him a martyr who spits at authority up to his last seconds on earth. Sullivan finally puts on the act, begging and pleading for life, and loses all credibility in the eyes of his onscreen admirers. Despite the film studio's intention of "social commentary," however, the audience in the theater watching Angels may feel this final cop-out makes the character even more appealing. After all, Rocky Sullivan shows great fortitude by "turning yellow" in the face of death; it was something he loathed to do, but chose because of his affection for the Kids and his friendship with O'Brien. Who wouldn't want to be that cool?

All Movie Guide - Fred Beldin