Raoul Walsh (1939)

 This isn’t a long picture by modern standards but, at 104 minutes, it feels long – and seems turgid and schematic, at least in comparison with The Public Enemy.  Whereas that film has opening and closing legends that confirm its moral credentials, The Roaring Twenties has a voiceover (John Deering), which we hear at several points, performing the same service.  It starts with a flashback montage – from 1940 (the film opened in theatres a few weeks after the outbreak of the World War II in Europe) to 1918, with images of the big names in international politics during the twenty-two years in question.   The Public Enemy’s mission statement describes the gangster world as an evil which must be eradicated.  The Roaring Twenties majors on the political and social forces of the time and on how they shape human destinies.  The real action begins with three American soldiers in the trenches in November 1918, minutes (seconds!) before the armistice is declared.

The soldiers are Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn).  The characterisation of at least one, and perhaps two, of the trio in this opening sequence contradicts the narration’s idea that their lives will be determined by something other than individual personality and motivation.   Lloyd, preparing to shoot a German soldier, puts down his gun.  When George asks why, Lloyd says, ‘He was a kid – only looked about fifteen’.  George takes aim and fires.  ‘He won’t see sixteen’, he announces with laconic satisfaction.  I say ‘at least one, and perhaps two’ because Jeffrey Lynn’s Lloyd is so colourless that blowing with the wind seems an essential part of his nature:  this makes it hard to tell whether this young lawyer is dominated by events or whether he’s a shrewd chameleon.  But nothing that Bogart’s cold-hearted George, a former saloon-keeper, does throughout the changing times that the story spans comes as any surprise.  (Although the title is decade-specific, the timescale of the action extends beyond the end of prohibition in 1933.)   The demonstration of how people fall prey to the corruptions of the particular time and place in which they live therefore has to focus on Cagney’s Eddie.  Before he went to fight in Europe, he was a New York cab-driver.  When he returns in 1919, someone else has got his job.   Eddie is determined to make the best of himself and builds up a fleet of cabs through delivering bootleg liquor.  He hires Lloyd as his lawyer and George subsequently becomes Eddie’s business partner, before they fall out.   After the Wall Street crash, Eddie falls on hard times.  George doesn’t.

While he was soldiering in France , a young American girl became Eddie’s pen pal.  He visits the girl, Jean Sherman, on his return home and she becomes the love of his life; it’s meant to be one of Eddie’s tragedies that this love is never reciprocated.  You can certainly believe that Priscilla Lane , who plays Jean, wouldn’t go for a bloke like Cagney’s Eddie, socially beneath her but emotionally beyond her.  The mystery is why Eddie would be attracted to Jean, who has a weirdly spinsterly quality in her early scenes and then turns into a particular type of screen heroine which lasted through the thirties and forties and even beyond:  tiresomely ladylike in a smiley-virtuous, condescending way.   (I think of Teresa Wright as a prime exponent of this style.)  Priscilla Lane was the actress’s real name but its suggestion of prissy is almost improbably apt (one thing you can believe about the story is that Jean would end up marrying Lloyd).  For a while, I wondered if Eddie’s love for Jean increased as his way of life moved further away from that of the ‘ideal soldier’ to whom she had written in 1918 but I don’t expect this was the idea.  The Lane sisters were a popular singing trio of the 1920s and 1930s and it appears that Priscilla was the most individually successful of the three.  Jean wants to be a musical star and Priscilla Lane gets the opportunity to sings ‘My Melancholy Baby’ and ‘I’m Just Wild About Harry’.  She’s melodious but impersonal – again, I found it hard to tell whether that was how we were supposed to find Jean.

The only relationship in The Roaring Twenties that amounts to much is the one between Eddie and Panama Smith, the speakeasy hostess who holds a torch for him as long as he holds one for Jean.  Although the role is hackneyed, Gladys George is excellent as Panama – her shopworn glamour and fragile resilience are very appealing, and there’s a chemistry between her and Cagney.   There’s also a connection between Cagney and Frank McHugh, who plays his old cab driver pal.  Cagney is very compelling (although less convincing here as a ringleader than as a sole agent).  Among the well-known names that appear on the credits is that of Robert Rossen, who shares the screenplay credit with Jerry Wald and Mark Hellinger (who wrote the source material).

11 July 2009