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Angels with Dirty Faces
James Cagney, Ann Sheridan in "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938; dir. Michael Curtiz)
Image from The Internet Movie Database and MPTV.net
Nominated for three Academy Awards in 1939, Angels with Dirty Faces is one of a number of classic crime films of the immediate prewar years that sought to rehabilitate or redeem the gangster figure of the twenties and early thirties.While this figure had for the most part been portrayed as an irredeemable thug and a social cancer, here the gangster is more of a tragic figure, criminalized by his environment but really good underneath.While the insistence on the role of social environment in creating the "hoodlum" may seem almost crudely deterministic to contemporary audiences, Cagney's performance and the brilliant, ambiguous ending give this film a complexity and power that endure.
For more background on the gangster genre, see Carlos Clarens, Crime Movies (New York, NY: Da Capo p, 1997).
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