☆ ☆ ☆ ½
Blonde
Crazy (1931) – R. Del Ruth
Jimmy Cagney is larger than life here,
just a few movies on from his breakthrough in The Public Enemy (also 1931), as
a bellboy turned big stakes grifter, travelling from hotel to hotel working his
cons. At the start of the film, he picks
up his partner, Joan Blondell who all the men leer at (in this pre-code film)
but who provides a ready slap to anyone who gets too frisky. Together, they swindle Guy Kibbee (stock
dirty old man of the 1930s) and then hope to use the proceeds to make more
money by teaming up with old hand Louis Calhern – who promptly tricks them out
of it along with his own blonde partner Noel Francis (the lure for Cagney). The rest of the movie is spent trying to get
back at Calhern with a big con of their own, while Blondell falls in love with heel
Roy Milland, leaving self-centered wisecracking Cagney on his own. Although the
film seems largely a comedy, we get a few nods to the gangster genre where
Cagney made his biggest splash – but he still moves like the dancer he longed
to be.
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