| Buy the VHS |   |
| Genre: | Classics |
| Year: | 1938 |
| Rating: | NR |
| Cast: | Michael Curtiz, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart |
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. Ed Hulse
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