Sarentrol Masterful Cinema

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Anatole Litvak, this above average boxing drama features an all-star cast that includes James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Frank Craven, Donald Crisp, Frank McHugh, Arthur Kennedy, George Tobias, Jerome Cowan, Elia Kazan, Anthony Quinn, Lee Patrick, and the list goes on, including lesser knowns who were uncredited like Edward Gargan. John Wexley's screenplay was based on Aben Kandel's novel. Its ending should leave a tear in your eye.Cagney plays a truck driver who was also a Golden Gloves boxing champ in his youth; Sheridan plays his girlfriend. Kennedy plays Cagney's younger brother, a composer-pianist whose classical work isn't appreciated by anyone but his older brother. McHugh plays Cagney's friend and co-worker, Tobias another who also runs the gym where Cagney still boxes to stay in shape. Kazan plays another former kid from the neighborhood that Cagney & McHugh run into right after he's gotten out of jail, so they help him a little. Craven only has a small cameo, as a street bum. When Kennedy's scholarship is cut in half, Cagney enters the ring for the first time in 5 years to make up the difference. He wins and impresses (an honest!) boxing manager Crisp, but Cagney believes that all boxers end up punchy old men, and declines Crisp's offer to make a career of it.Out on the town celebrating his win, Cagney and friends go to a nightclub where Quinn is the dance master. Since Cagney doesn't dance, he lets Sheridan go with Quinn and the two win a dancing competition. With stars in her eyes, Sheridan pursues her dream to become famous dancing with Quinn, after she's told Cagney he has no ambition 'cause he's happy just being a truck driver. To impress and provide better for Sheridan, Cagney visits Crisp who insists he can make Cagney champ if he'll let him call the shots. Cagney agrees, and makes progress steadily rising through the ranks, until he's within a fight or two of a title fight. He then insists that Crisp get him a chance to fight the champ so that he can win back Sheridan from her now famous dancing duo with Quinn. Though Crisp would rather wait, he does what Cagney asks. Kazan, now a big success as a gangster, bets Cowan $50,000 that his old pal Cagney will beat Cowan's champ. Cagney loses the fight, and his sight, through dirty tricks by the champ and his manager in the ring. Kazan gets even with Cowan, but then gets the surprise of his life.That's really just the film's first half, even though it makes a pretty good movie (if somewhat incomplete) by itself. The second half is comprised of Cagney's struggle to be useful again, which inspires his brother Kennedy to strive for his dream of one day playing at Carnegie Hall. Sheridan is made to feel responsible for Cagney's condition by Crisp, and then ends up rooming with Patrick when she leaves Quinn's employ.The film's sentimental endings (there are two, really) are both tearjerking and satisfying.

AaronCapenBanner Anatole Litvak directed this drama that begins with actor Frank Craven talking directly to the audience, saying how there are lots of stories in New York City, and he presents one of them: James Cagney plays Danny Kenny, a truck driver who is also a prize fighter, though has little interest in it. His brother Eddie(played by Arthur Kennedy) has dreams of being a concert pianist, which lead Danny to enter the fight racket to pay for his brother's tuition, though there will be tragic consequences...Ann Sheridan plays Peggy Nash, Danny's girlfriend who has dreams of becoming a professional dancer, but must put up with her lecherous male partner(played by Anthony Quinn). All three of them will have their fates intertwine in this interesting and well-acted film, especially Cagney, who does a fine job convincing the viewer he is blind... New Yorkers in particular will like this.

classicsoncall Dedicated to his craft, Jimmy Cagney underwent a grueling twelve week training regimen to lose weight and get into shape as a prize fighter. At forty two, his weight had gone up to a hefty one hundred eighty pounds, but his enthusiasm for the film motivated him to drop thirty five pounds for the role. Apparently the film recognized his actual weight in fight posters in which he's listed as a hundred forty five pound welterweight."City For Conquest" was one of three pictures teaming Cagney with feisty Ann Sheridan. Both actors are personal favorites of mine, and "Angels With Dirty Faces" earns a spot in my personal Top Ten film list. Like 'Angels' this one will tug at your heartstrings at the finale, although the situations presented are significantly different. Reduced to selling newspapers after a vicious fight in which he loses his eyesight, Danny Kenny (Cagney) is overcome with joy at hearing a symphony his brother (Arthur Kennedy) wrote. Equally moving, Danny is reunited with his childhood sweetheart Peggy (Sheridan).The picture is non stop in terms of action and dialog. From the opening scenes, there's always a sense of hustle and bustle emanating from the streets and neighborhoods of the picture's locale, New York City. In that respect it's vintage Warner Brothers, brought to life by the crisp black and white photography of James Wong Howe and Sol Polito.Backing up the principal actors are veteran Warner contract players Donald Crisp and Frank McHugh along with a couple of casting surprises. Anthony Quinn appears as the suave but seedy dance partner who guides Sheridan's character to stardom, and future director Elia Kazan pops up in a small but significant role as one of Danny's friends who goes the gangster route as time goes by. I have to say, his performance seemed pretty natural to me and had he stayed with it, might have made his mark as an actor with the same success he achieved on the other side of the camera.As good as the film is, and as well as it was received by the public when it was released, this turned out to be a picture Cagney didn't like at all. Part of that stems from his relationship with director Anatole Litvak with whom he argued constantly over the story's interpretation. So much so that he even wrote a letter of apology to Aben Kandel, the writer of the novel on which the film was based. Whether true or not, Cagney swore at the time never to watch another one of his movies. I don't think I would have bet the ranch on that one.Cagney's last professional work occurred in the 1984 TV movie "Terrible Joe Moran", in which he portrays a retired boxer. That picture offers up a number of scenes in which Cagney is shown mixing it up in the ring and for the longest time I couldn't figure out where the footage came from. Now I know that those clips were inserted from the boxing scenes appearing in "City For Conquest".

Bill Slocum Late in the film, our hero Danny Kenny (James Cagney) tells us he "don't like that tear-jerking sob stuff." No doubt he would have winced sitting through "City Of Conquest." I did, a lot of the time.A tough but amiable West Side kid, Danny is a skilled amateur boxer who doesn't like fighting. He cares more about his love for the girl who lives up the stairs from his apartment. But when she grows up, Peg (Ann Sheridan) wants more out of life than to be the wife of a truck driver. She has aspirations to be a big-time dancer. To keep up, Danny takes his chances in the professional ring, with hard results."City For Conquest" is a film that wants to hit a home run every inning. To the extent it relies on Cagney, it delivers more than it fails. Cagney is in great form, dialing down on his trademark bantam ambition and commanding the screen in his unaffected way. Other pictures make you fear or admire Cagney; here you just really like him and enjoy his easy charm.Alas, the film uses this to shoehorn a lot of melodrama. In addition to Danny, you get the story of his musical brother Eddie (Arthur Kennedy) and Peg's struggle for success as the partner of headcase-on-the-make Murray Burns (Anthony Quinn). Quinn and Kennedy would go on to score nine Oscar nominations between them and co-star in "Lawrence Of Arabia," a film as epically ambitious as "City For Conquest" but much more successful.There's a lot of talent in evidence here, both on screen and behind the camera. Maybe too much. Elia Kazan's performance as Danny's loyal gangster pal Googi is rightly praised for its naturalism, which is easy to notice in a film where so much of the supporting cast plays their one-note parts with such over-revved gusto. Googi is an interesting character, but his scenes, like Kennedy's, too often stretch the narrative more than it can afford. Third-billed Frank Craven jumps in and out of the movie as the same kind of narrator he played in "Our Town," offering a lot of folky, overwritten nonsense he insists is true because "I got clothes on my back."I guess they wanted to make a point about Manhattan as dream-weaver and back-breaker, but instead of just letting the characters breathe and develop in a natural way you get a kind of big-studio meat-grinder effect, a pushed-up drama with tears and big speeches of the kind Holden Caulfield complained about in "Catcher In The Rye." I like that artificiality in other movies, but here the emotions are played a little too strong and too quick. Poor Sheridan seems lost alternately playing a hustling heel and a loyal girlfriend.Director Anatole Litvak delivers some interesting setpieces, and he is handsomely supported by the cinematography of Sol Polito and James Wong Howe, wizards of black-and-white and the best thing about "City For Conquest" after Cagney. One amazing shot of a street dance zooms out from Cagney watching Sheridan to swoop under a line of lights and up over the adoring crowd. How they did that I have no idea. You get shots like that throughout the film, pieces of artistry that call no attention to themselves.Most everything else does, though. Sometimes it works, like the Max Steiner score. Sure, it's Gershwin-lite and played up too much, stopping the film dead near the end when Eddie introduces his "Magic Isle Symphony." Still, it's a great number.Too often, though, you get another close-up of Sheridan in tears, or Craven smirking up a storm as he grandiloquently lights into another quandary posed by the big city. A better script, with a tighter focus on Danny the fighter, and "City For Conquest" could have been up there with Cagney's best. Instead, it's a worthy depiction of how well Cagney could hold up a lesser film with sheer acting power and finesse, something to see for his many fans but a missed opportunity for the rest of us.