James Cagney dime-novel-style programmer has his character Flicker Hayes, newly released from prison, dangerously double-crossing the hoods who'd double-crossed him as two more goons plan to keep on his trail...
Beginning in San Fransisco where he meets Joan Blondell, as a prostitute setting her mind on marrying a simple fisherman in a John Steinbeck Monterrey style seaside town...
She has a seemingly benign passenger in Cagney's Hayes, both hiding out in completely different ways. Cagney's surprisingly soft-spoken here, but not nearly as much as dutiful Victor Jory as the fisherman who doesn't care about Blondell's racy past...
This is merely a distraction to Cagney's story that, in itself, distracts from what the movie, HE WAS HER MAN, is leading to - with armed goons on the way, it doesn't look likely he'll survive...
Veteran (even at that time) character-actor Frank Craven fits nicely into the mellow pre-Noir - in one of Cagney's more artistic ventures at the end of the decade, CITY FOR CONQUEST, he played a happy-go-lucky bum who provides the roman chorus narration -- here he's a con man "rat" with a trick up his sleeve, ultimately at Cagney's expense: our previously selfish crook is headed toward a crossroad since Blondell loves him madly...
The fishing village connected to the passage seaward is like a dream milieu to the first early Cagney programmer that's more a crime-related fable than his usual con-man connected heist thriller...
What it lacks in the usual edgy excitement or spontaneously sarcastic humor is made up for within the creative storyline in this page-turning melodrama with a more poetic than satisfying, noir-esque conclusion.
Beginning in San Fransisco where he meets Joan Blondell, as a prostitute setting her mind on marrying a simple fisherman in a John Steinbeck Monterrey style seaside town...
She has a seemingly benign passenger in Cagney's Hayes, both hiding out in completely different ways. Cagney's surprisingly soft-spoken here, but not nearly as much as dutiful Victor Jory as the fisherman who doesn't care about Blondell's racy past...
This is merely a distraction to Cagney's story that, in itself, distracts from what the movie, HE WAS HER MAN, is leading to - with armed goons on the way, it doesn't look likely he'll survive...
Veteran (even at that time) character-actor Frank Craven fits nicely into the mellow pre-Noir - in one of Cagney's more artistic ventures at the end of the decade, CITY FOR CONQUEST, he played a happy-go-lucky bum who provides the roman chorus narration -- here he's a con man "rat" with a trick up his sleeve, ultimately at Cagney's expense: our previously selfish crook is headed toward a crossroad since Blondell loves him madly...
The fishing village connected to the passage seaward is like a dream milieu to the first early Cagney programmer that's more a crime-related fable than his usual con-man connected heist thriller...
What it lacks in the usual edgy excitement or spontaneously sarcastic humor is made up for within the creative storyline in this page-turning melodrama with a more poetic than satisfying, noir-esque conclusion.