SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959)

In what proved to be his antepenultimate film (excluding a late encore in RAGTIME/’81), James Cagney reaches back to the old menace that established his legend one last time.*   Almost shockingly good in this well-made ‘Irish Troubles’ story from the 1920s about a University Medical Professor who moonlights as a rebel commander in the I.R.A.  So wound up in  ‘the cause,’ he’s become enthralled to the violent struggle and doesn’t want the action to stop, even for a just peace.  Falling under his sway is Don Murray’s Irish/American med student, a WWI vet sure he’s seen enough killing till he’s radicalized thru a combination of family history, a friend’s death and a brutal interrogation by the British Black & Tan unit.  With unexpectedly muscular direction by Michael Anderson, a workaday talent regularly drafted into big assignments pleasing & perfectly awful (AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS/’56; SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN/’68), here much helped by fave lenser Erwin Hillier whose heavy use of red-filtered b&w gives off a glowering edge.*   Strong acting support too.  Murray’s romantic rivals, working-class Irish Glynis Johns & upper-crust Brit Dana Wynter are shoehorned in, but very good; so too senior I.R.A. head Michael Redgrave, poet rebel Cyril Cusack and early credits for a fresh-faced Donal Donnelly and Richard Harris as a pigheaded gunman.  (Harris even gets a splashy death dance right out of a ‘30s gangster film with Cagney.)  And if Anderson loses control as the suspense overflows toward the end, this is still a grand exit for Cagney’s snarling genius.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK - I:  Keen-eared listeners will recognize some propulsive music cues composer William Alwyn refitted from his own score to ODD MAN OUT/’47; Carol Reed’s film about ‘The Troubles’ and a robbery gone wrong with James Mason.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/04/odd-man-out-1947.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - II:  *Presumably it was Cagney, taking no chances, who brought in Ivan Goff & Ben Roberts, scripters on WHITE HEAT/’49.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - III:  *A superbly mastered 2022 edition on Kino-Lorber does Erwin Hillier proud.  But look out for a HUGE Spoiler at the end of a nice interview with 90-ish Don Murray.