this passing hurts.
The other day, a facebook friend posted some things from the 50’s and asked if we were old enough to remember them. One of the items were View-Master Reels, and I posted that I still had mine from when I was a kid. I must have close to a hundred of these small views that no doubt influenced me as an artist. With their small detailed crowded dioramas in 3-D I took from them everything there was to get. I don’t have the original viewer or the nice plastic box that they came in, but I was able to buy a newer viewer and sometimes I look at the “three-dimensional pictures in full color”. The travelogs and real life stories didn’t interest me much as a kid, I liked the fairy tales and cartoons the best, although the movie and t.v. stars are kinda fun to look at today. So many forgotten faces. My main interest then was the modeling and sets that these 3-D images and characters resided in. How did they do that or this. My mother always bought me things I could make and do by myself. “I don’t want you to depend on anyone to play with” So as I kid I got pads of paper to draw on, clay, and kits to make all sorts of things. Little molds to fill with white plaster and then when dry paint them or wonderful totem pole kits, or cardboard supermarkets with colorful cutouts of food. Occasionally she would buy me paint by number paint kits (I have a picture of me working on one) but I would soon tire of painting and matching colors to those faint numbers on the canvas board in order to finish up with a horse or a house by a lake. I would just paint whatever I wanted on them and be done with it. My brother had more patience then me and I remember a pair of paint by number ships that he did that hung in our bedroom for years. I also didn’t have patience for coloring books and would color in the lips of movie stars and then give up on them. Paper dolls were another matter and I loved them not because of their feminine appeal but because I could use them as props in my made up theatre pieces. Of course my brother and father looked aghast when they saw me cutting out dolls and putting on shows with them, but that didn’t stop me. My father when I was sick would send home from our candy store luncheonette cowboy coloring books and war comics which I put aside on my sick bed. I also loved the Jon Gnagy drawing kits with my first encounters with charcoal and the other sophisticated drawing tools. Again I would get bored with following directions and would instead cut out the instruction drawings of landscapes and bridges and place them in empty tissue and food boxes with color added to them. Another strong influence on me and my artistic urges. Some years ago at a book store I found the Jon Gnagy instruction book, and it was like finding a crown jewel or a long lost friend. I also liked playing with miniature toys, soldiers, castles houses and train sets. When I was a grown up artist some critics asked me if I had played with model trains when a child and I said yes but I didn’t do what you were suppose to do with them. I burnt and melted the houses and trees, and I got slapped a few times by my mother for playing with matches and with fire. Childhood cannot be underestimated for playing with fire.
Cagney like many of the early movie actors came from Broadway, they had voices
then, and he also brought his chorus boy dance moves also along for the ride.
Watch how he moves, or walks into a room or the little quick dance steps he
does when he first meets Jean Harlow and realizes that she likes him, it’s very
fast and smooth and you might even miss it if you turn away from the screen for
a second. The film is set in Chicago and begins as many films of this genre did
and still do with background material and scenes that set up the larger picture
of poor urban blight and the childhoods of the two main leads, Tom Powers and
Matt Doyle played by Cagney & Edward Woods. Tommy is a bad kid, a tease a
bully and a little two bit hood who will grow up to be James Cagney who briefly
becomes a big time hood. William Wellman whose film this is, uses fast montage
sequences but also moves in to show us the clichéd poor boy of the streets
shtick to explain to us why Tommy will become who he is.
The story goes that Cagney was suppose to play the secondary part, the nicer
hood and best pal Matt Doyle but when the studio heads saw him in his other
films they quickly changed their minds and gave Cagney the lead. Smart move,
smart money, smart everything. This is Cagney’s movie from the get go, and to
use an overused saying you can’t take your eyes off him. He controls everything
in the film including the dialog, which he pretty much spits out, racing
against the one lousy microphone probably hidden in a glass of beer, or the
light on the table or maybe in a vase of flowers. It doesn’t matter. The
important and lasting impression is how great and original his delivery is. The
other actors are ok, they’re not bad, they’re stiff and nervous and rural
looking as they try to clearly speak slowly and deliver their lines as if they are
doing a production of Way Down East and
were trying to reach the last row in the balcony. They’re D.O.A and who
wouldn’t be next to Cagney. Then there is Cagney’s relationship with women. The
earliest incident is when he is a boy and teases and trips the young sister of
his best friend Matt. Tommy’s misogyny comes to a boil in the famous grapefruit
scene with Mae Clarke his unhappy girlfriend (she’s not even credited in the
opening title credits). In a later scene Cagney becomes the sexual victim of a predatory
older female moll who belongs to the leader of the gang. During a drunken night
when the boss is away the moll tries her best to put the make on Cagney who
will have nothing to do with her and when he wakes from his drunken stupor the
next morning he realizes that she has
taken sexual advantage of him basically raping him. Did she ride him like a
dead horse? Cagney is outraged, smacks her across her face and leaves the
apartment in disgust.
Homo longing and dread has been a fixture in many gangster films from “Little
Caesar” right up to contemporary crime movies. In “Public Enemy” there is a gay
baiting scene with a very fey tailor who flirts it up with Cagney as he
measures him for what is probably his first suit and Cagney doesn’t do much to discourage
him in his flirting. Homo longing and dread can be seen across the decades and
is especially visible in such films as “The Line-Up” “The Big Combo”, “The
Crimson Kimono” “The Killing” “House of
Bamboo” and more recently in “The Untouchables” . Hand in hand with Homo dread
and longing is also the safer male bonding which of course is more common in
gangster and noir films.
In Public Enemy its pretty clear that Tommy has a thing for his boyhood friend
and fellow thug Matt, and would rather be with him then with any “dame”
including the luscious Jean Harlow who can’t seem to get Tommy to make love to
her. In a late scene Harlow reclines filling the screen with her body as she
tells Tommy that she is leaving him and there is no doubt as to why. Simply put
Tommy can’t get it up for her and their relationship still remains chaste and
unfulfilled. Harlow who’s lavish and lovely in the film but seems to be off
somewhere in outer space delivers her lines in a strange dead and stiff manner,
nowhere near the saucy and great vibrancy she will come to be known for just a
year later.
She sits on Cagney’s lap, cradling his head and calling him her little boy they
kiss and finally we think they are going to do it, when suddenly Matt is at the
door with news of a crisis and Cagney is on the run once again failing to make
Jean complete and happy. The final image in the film of Jean is her hurling a
glass against the wall in anger and disappointment. A much different sitting on
a lap will mirror this one 20 years later in “White Heat” where Cagney playing
another psycho gangster this time sits on his mother’s lap. Mother’s are also a
recurring presence in gangster films and are usually a benign and supportive
wedge for their “good boys” but are occasionally toxic as is Margaret
Wycherly’s great performance as Cagney’s mom in “White Heat.”
Most of the violence is shown off screen, the various shootings including the
killing of a horse, and the climatic shoot out is heard but not seen. This
dramatic and startling scene takes place outside a rival gang’s clubhouse.
Cagney stands in the rain across the street from the clubhouse, two guns drawn
and ready to take justice and revenge for the murder of who was probably the
only person he truly loved. With an expression of ecstasy crossing his face
this startling scene is sexual and provocative, it’s like Tom finally has his
long sought after orgasm “la petite mort” the little death. The big death will
come shortly thereafter and will end the film with a startling and memorable
ending, that is one of the great finishes in all of cinema.
William Wellman who was known as “Wild Bill” began making movies in the silent
period and stunned with his 1927 war movie “Wings” that won the first best
picture Oscar but he really made his mark with Public Enemy. He went on to make
popular and entertaining films in every genre including westerns, comedies and
the wonderfully entertaining semi-musical “Lady Of Burlesque”. The look of
“Public Enemy” is indebted to German films especially the crime stories of
Fritz Lang, the film has sharp edges and deep shadows in its look, along with
expressionistic set-ups and night street scenes. Wellman makes use of real
music sources instead of a film score using the popular song of the period “I’m
Forever Blowing Bubbles” which is used in the opening credits in a bold and
jazzy way and once again during the film and finally as a bold coda at the end
of the film. With the great Joan Blondell in a small role as a easy virtue gal
who hooks up with Matt and manages to get him to marry her. One of the ten best
films of 1931.
