Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

drjgardner Straight-shooting Joan Blondell and Jimmy Cagney paired up in films like "Public Enemy" (1931), "Blonde Crazy " (1931), "The Crowd Roars" (1932), and Footlight Parade" (1933) and this film has probably the least chemistry between the two. That doesn't mean that the two of them don't do their usual good job, and that's really all you have in this easily forgotten film about a safe cracker on the run with a former prostitute who wants to settle down in a small fishing village with a tender nice guy (played by Victor Jory which is one of his rare good guy appearances).At this time in his career Cagney was having problems playing the tough guy killer, so he did a number of films in which he wasn't a criminal ("Picture Snatcher", "Winner Take All", "Here Comes the Navy") but none of these was really successful, so his non-crime dramas were interspersed with crime flicks and this is one of those examples. But nothing matched "Public Enemy", "Angels with Dirty Faces", "Each Dawn I Die", and "The Roaring Twenties", at least until his magnificent performance in "Yankee Doodle Dandy".The film is great for fans of Cagney or Blondell, but otherwise forgettable.

classicsoncall Man, don't you just love the dialog in these early pre-Code films? In 1931's "Blonde Crazy", right after Jimmy Cagney's character sets up Joan Blondell with a job as a hotel linen girl, he offers to bring up some 'hooch' and sandwiches! In an opening scene here, Flicker Hayes (Cagney) rats out a couple of his former hoodlum cronies to the police, stating that the warehouse job about to be pulled has a 'safe full of junk and nose candy'! Wow! Nose candy! Apparently the cop on the other end of the line knew what he was talking about, he didn't even bat an eye.This was the third film in which Cagney and Blondell had a relationship of sorts. The other two were "Sinners Holiday" (1930) and "Blonde Crazy" (1931). Actually, Blondell's former prostitute character Rose Lawrence is somewhat of a conflicted woman here, juggling her romantic possibilities between Jerry Allen (Flicker's assumed name in San Francisco) and Portugese fisherman Nick Gardell. For Victor Jory, the role of Nick appeared to be an uncomfortable one and generally outside his comfort zone. Or maybe I'm just used to seeing him as a tough guy or villain most of the time. The romantic type just doesn't seem to fit him.So when Jerry ditches Rose and she can't make her mind up about telling Nick she can't/won't marry him, it leaves all kinds of question marks in the mind of the viewer. I thought that was a pretty good speech she made Jerry when she said she was still pulling for him after he dumped her, making him feel every bit the heel he was. Which wasn't a stretch really, considering the fact that one of the hoods he set up got the chair after he took their fifteen large for the botched warehouse heist.What goes around comes around I guess when bad guys have a falling out. It would seem on the surface the picture had a happy ending with Rose and Nick finally hooking up. In just about any other picture you might have heard an off screen gunshot to know that Flicker's fate was sealed; here you had to read between the lines a little bit to realize he would never make it to the wedding reception.

Fred_Rap In his early years of stardom, James Cagney had a volatile working relationship with the brass at Warner Brothers. He rebelled against the interchangeable tough guy vehicles routinely foisted upon him, and if this standard issue product is any example, he had every right to grumble. It's a dour, slackly paced retread of "They Knew What They Wanted," and probably the least representative, most disappointing of Cagney's early showcases.As directed by Lloyd Bacon, this one doesn't even have the saving grace of the star's dynamic energy. Perversely, he plays a low-key, laid-back ex-convict (with polished diction, no less) on the lam from vengeful gangsters who hide out among Portuguese fishermen on the California coast.Perhaps Cagney's moribund performance was his way of blowing a raspberry at the lame material (earlier that year, he shaved his head in protest over the far superior "Jimmy the Gent"), and his lack of enthusiasm seems to have been shared by his co-stars. Joan Blondell, leading lady to Cagney in seven previous films, turns in one of her rare sullen performances as a hooker torn between the ex-con and a naive villager. It's a dispiriting spectacle to watch the Depression-era's most vivacious good-time girl reduced to a cloying, lachrymose sob sister, not to mention an ignoble end to a memorable screen partnership.

MartynGryphon Her Was Her Man, directed by Lloyd Bacon, was sadly, the last of the seven James Cagney/Joan Blondell movies of the early '30's. In my opinion, they were the first great 'Movie Team' of the 'talkie' era. We all remember Hepburn & Tracy, Flynn & De Havilland, Powell & Loy, yet the Cagney & Blondell partnership seems forgotten in comparison.To make it sadder still, the plot of this movie is a lot darker and melancholic than their others and I feel that it's a shame their final scene together of the partnership never had that happily ever after ending.Cagney plays Flicker Hayes, a gangster who, newly released from jail, is hell bent on exacting his long awaited revenge on the gang that left him to take the rap. He becomes a 'stoolie' and rats to the cops about a forthcoming job which results in a gang member being arrested, tried and executed. His old gang obviously do not respond well to this, and won't rest until Hayes is firmly under the sod and a contract is put out on his head.He lams out to San Francisco where he assumes the inconspicuous alias of Jerry Allen. It is here that he runs into a down on her luck woman called Rose Lawrence, (Blondell). Rose is on her way to a small fishing town down the coast to marry a man who, while well aware of her shady past, is still keen to marry her regardless. Lawrence sick of the hand to mouth life she has been leading has accepted. Hayes too sees the attraction and before their first meeting is over the two have fallen very much in love. However, Lawrence is determined that her days of following the wrong guy are long over and intends to see her proposal through.Hayes takes her under his wing determined that she's the girl for him and that she's not destined to become the wife of some dull fisherman. She's still unaware of who he really is and the real reason he's in California. It is leaving San Francisco that he is recognised by a small time informer called Pop Sims, (Frank Craven), who spends no time at all in calling New York to tell Hayes's old gang of his whereabouts who immediately dispatch two hit men to finish the job.Hayes delivers Lawrence to the home of Nick Gardella, (Victor Jory), the decent, kind and good Portuguese fisherman Lawrence is engaged to. Hayes is welcomed warmly by Nick and his sweet mother, who both start to treat him as one of the family as opposed to a visitor. Meanwhile, Pop Sims, has also hit the Gardella home masquerading as a hobby fisherman named Jim Parker. The Gardella's seemingly endless hospitality is extended to him also and Sims now is perfectly placed to guide the hit men straight to the front door of the Gardella home.Lawrence is having second thoughts about the marriage as she sees Nick as nothing more than a kind man who gave her an offer of a legitimate life when all seemed bleak, coupled with her insatiable love for Hayes. Hayes is also mad about her and they agree to run away before the marriage to spend their lives together. Hayes soon has second thoughts about it, as he sees Nick and his mother as genuine, upstanding, decent people whom he can't betray and likewise loves Lawrence enough not to ruin her first, and perhaps only, chance of a decent life. He leaves only hours before the wedding, but when he hears that the hit men are already on the way to the Gardella home, he rushes back to save his friends.He arrives just in time and convinces the hit men that nobody there knows who he really is and that he will go peacefully to his doom if they leave Rose and the Gardella's alone. They agree, and Hayes is led away to his death. As the church bells ring after Rose & Nick's Wedding, it not only heralds the start of two peoples life together but the ending of a gangster's worthless life.Released just at same time as the Production Code was being strictly enforced, it makes no mention of the fact that Blondell's character was so obviously an ex-hooker but it is certainly suggested numerous times, as is the fact that Cagney & Blondell's character obviously had a sexual encounter the very night they met. All of these things led to the movie being rated C 'Condemned' by the Catholic Legion of Decency who had a 30 year stranglehold on the movie industry. If this film had been made even one year before, then the sanitisation that made the movie seem a little stagnant in parts would not have been there. It is also the only Cagney film where he doesn't even raise his voice and while we all admire his 'hood with a heart' performance, I missed the tough talking and also the action which is also kept to a sanitised minimum.Praise has to go to Victor Jory in his portrayal of Nick. An all round decent Joe. I've always relished his bad guy roles, especially the role of Yancey in 'Dodge City', but seeing him play a good guy has made me realise how much I've underestimated and misjudged his talents.I've found that most of the movies I've seen that was made between 1934-1935, (and that's a lot), seemed to be struggling to keep their plots in compliance with the newly enforced code. He Was Her Man, was no exception.Enjoy!