Towards the end of his career, James Cagney began to resemble Ernest Borgnine. This is especially notable in A Lion Is In The Streets – a 1953 tract about the corrupting power of politics in the Deep South, although one that starts out looking like a misguided Disney venture. Stick with it, it’s more complex than it looks.
Wind back two decades, and Cagney’s features were sharper – partly down to youth, partly down to being filmed in black and white. He’d strut from scene to scene, ready to explode with that fiery brand of bitterness – small in stature, he became a byword for the gangster with the Napoleon complex, and what’s interesting is that you actually notice his size, that there’s no sensitivity about having larger actors around him. How often are today’s actors given flatteringly flat-footed companions on the red carpet?
Cagney played against type in 1935’s G-Men, as a lawyer raised by a good-hearted gangster who winds up hunting his old associates. G-Men feels remarkably modern, and recalls Michael Mann’s Public Enemies in its structure. It’s arguably the superior movie, and certainly more enjoyable – perhaps the temporal proximity to the subject matter helps? So much easier to do that sort of thing when everyone on set remembers it.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 