James Cagney & Joan Blondell came to Hollywood after PENNY ARCADE, a fast B’way flop whose director, William Keighley, followed two years later. Filmed as SINNERS’ HOLIDAY, six more pairings followed with this, their 7th and last. It’s an unexpectedly dark, romantic number, more Jean Gabin/ French Poetic Realism than lighthearted Cagney/Blondell vehicle. (And note the purposefully misleading poster.) Directed with uncommon sensitivity by Lloyd Bacon, it casts a rueful spell. Cagney’s an ex-con who sets up a couple of safecrackers for the police; then winds up on the run when one of the thugs gets away. Blondell’s a tart, trying to turn her life around. She’s just engaged to Victor Jory’s Portuguese-California fisherman when she & Cagney meet-cute in his hotel room as she tries to retrieve her wedding dress. Sparks fly, and even though she wants to do the smart/honorable thing, the wedding is threatened. So too Cagney, now with a pair of hitman on his tail. A special kind of film, elegiac in tone, its frank sexuality likely got it suppressed under the newly enforced Production Code just two weeks after it opened. A real beauty (with lenser George Barnes lending a dreamy touch & lovely California coast location work) even if Cagney sports that mealy little mustache he’d to grow to tick off boss & arch nemesis Jack Warner.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Paid to the dialect coach! Victor Jory’s Portuguese accent even worse than Spencer Tracy’s in CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS/’37. They’re both fine anyway.
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