Terrific 1940 film where the great James Cagney does it again in giving a memorable performance. This time it's as a fighter who goes into boxing so that his brother, Arthur Kennedy, can fulfill a musical career as well as an escape for girl friend, Ann Sheridan, ditching him for a dancing career with Anthony Quinn, a real cad if there ever were.
The film has a tremendous supporting cast and all do a fine job in showing what movie making should be.
Future director, Elia Kazan, is in fine form as a mobster, a product of a rough childhood environment. In seeing Kazan here, I wonder what his acting career would have been like had he not chosen to go behind the camera.
The aspect of N.Y. life is wonderfully shown by the upper class of musical life, life on the lower east side as well as the boxing center of sports. How they interact in this film is so well memorably accomplished.
As a boxing magnate, I thought that the usual erudite Donald Crisp would be miscast. How wrong I was. He evoked much sympathy in trying to protect his fighter-Cagney.
A truly memorable film. This is a heck of a movie classic.
The film has a tremendous supporting cast and all do a fine job in showing what movie making should be.
Future director, Elia Kazan, is in fine form as a mobster, a product of a rough childhood environment. In seeing Kazan here, I wonder what his acting career would have been like had he not chosen to go behind the camera.
The aspect of N.Y. life is wonderfully shown by the upper class of musical life, life on the lower east side as well as the boxing center of sports. How they interact in this film is so well memorably accomplished.
As a boxing magnate, I thought that the usual erudite Donald Crisp would be miscast. How wrong I was. He evoked much sympathy in trying to protect his fighter-Cagney.
A truly memorable film. This is a heck of a movie classic.