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Gangsters and doughboys, "fightin' is their racket." The anticipatory feint is on Scarface, the jewelry robbery is interrupted and the hood (Edmund Lowe) goes home in working-class overalls, to see his Italian parents and dote on his younger sister (Marguerite Churchill). Prison or the battlefield are the choices once he's caught, a bright idea from the newshound (Lee Tracy) on election year. (Ward Bond is the sergeant overseeing the criminals shipping overseas, one identifies himself as a "boiglar" and is promptly handed a cornet.) "Over there," as the tune goes, briefly a Flagg and Quirt comedy with the college fancy-pants (Frank Albertson) and French tootsies. "Nice girl, full of good, clean fun." A pleasingly slapdash affair, a blur of tones and genres with felicitous details amid early-sound flatness. (Andrew Bennison sees the new technique as a way of recording stiff dramatics, John Ford prefers jokey swearing: "You mule-eared, dog-faced son of a pop-eyed...") Spoils of war, an enemy helmet that becomes Papa's chamber pot. "That hero bunk" on one side and "a sucker's game" on the other, in between the tenuous respectability of a New York nightclub where a burly barbershop quartet serenades the audience. Socialite (Catherine Dale Owen) and mob boss (Warren Hymer) figure in the vendetta, a Murnau track across the marshlands finds the kidnapped child in the hideout, cf. Dassin's Rififi. "Am I gonna stand for a rat makin' a mug outta me?" The best is saved for last—the extended stillness before a shootout vividly recalled by Kurosawa in Sanjuro, something to knock the camera back through swinging saloon doors. With William Harrigan, Ilka Chase, Ferike Boros, Paul Porcasi, Ben Bard, Yola d'Avril, Jack Pennick, and Randolph Scott. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |