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Celebratory flotsam in the East River points the way to the PS General Slocum fire, cf. Walsh's Regeneration, survivors include a pair of orphaned young pals bound for opposite sides of the law. The rascal grows up into a roguish gambler (Clark Gable) on chummy terms with the police (G-Men head straight to the kitchen when raiding his casino), the bookworm gets elected as assistant district attorney (William Powell) and is determined to clean up graft. Between them lies the thoughtful moll (Myrna Loy), ready to give up yachts for domesticity. "Entertaining your gunslinger pals is bad enough, but politicians?" The MGM machine in full swing, a fatuous confection lifted by deft packaging by W.S. Van Dyke and the interplay of its stars. Loy hops into the back of a taxi with Powell and the Nick and Nora rapport is born, at an approximation of the Cotton Club they listen to a peculiarly familiar chanson from a dusked-up Shirley Ross. The gangster shrugs good-naturedly, then bumps off the blackmailer threatening to get in the way of his friend's gubernatorial ascension. "A very little boy who was playing with a great big box of matches" to his former mistress, a murder suspect to throw the book at to the conflicted straight-arrow he's known since childhood. (In comic contrast to the Beautiful People triangle, there's Nat Pendleton and Isabel Jewell on the margins as lunkheaded goon and pickpocketing dingbat.) Gable's pre-Code grin on the way to the electric chair marks the divide between this and, say, Angels with Dirty Faces. "Die the way you lived, all of a sudden. That's the way to go." In the end, useful bits of celluloid for the digital Histoire(s) du Cinéma of Mann's Public Enemies. With Leo Carrillo, George Sidney, Muriel Evans, Thomas E. Jackson, Noel Madison, Leonid Kinskey, and Mickey Rooney. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |