This blog entry is part of my "movie year countdown round #2". Read more about that here.
Angels with Dirty Faces
Angels with Dirth Faces (most likely the inspiration for the name Angels with Filthy Souls, the fake gangster movie featured in Home Alone as most people my age probably think of when hearing the title) throws a lot of different elements together. You have the main story with James Cagney's and Pat O'Brien's characters as friends who by circumstance get thrown into opposite paths in life but remain friends of sorts. You get a vehicle for the Dead End Kids that solidified them as a viable box office draw in their first main film outside of the Dead End story that made them famous. You get a love story that doesn't develop into much. And a few other elements here and there.
Cagney is always so captivating to watch, and the interactions with the Dead End kids can be amusing as well. I was ready to rate this movie higher than I did until the end which quite annoyed me. *some spoilers to follow* The idea that Father Jerry feels like he needs to persuade Rocky pretend that he is a coward at the last minute of his life to persuade the Dead End Kids' characters to follow the Christian faith is really absurd and rather insulting I think. First of all, it's hard for me to believe that something like Rocky crying and begging before going to the electric chair is really going to cause a major life conversion for these kids. And secondly, and most importantly, it insinuates that a viable Christian faith can be achieved in a way other than through revelation of the truth of the Gospel and God's love and grace. Not only that, it insinuates that this faith can be or in some cases must be based on lies!
And it's also so strange because a primary theme of the film is a very self aware exploration of how Hollywood can produce gangster films which people want to watch because the life of the gangster is so fascinating while complying with the Hays Office which required that any gangster movies depict the results of a life of crime as being undesirable. The Dead End Kids are kind of like the American audience. It's like they are saying, we know you came to this movie to live vicariously through the gangster, to enjoy the riches and excitement of a life of crime, but we have to lie to you at the end with an incongruous ending because the Hays Office is requiring us to.
I think there are ways of being more honest in a depiction about a life of crime and still reveal some of the pitfalls, emptiness, anxiety, and other potential negatives of such a situation without having to feel like it's all forced. And you know, it could even be entertaining.
Rating: 7/10