Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Robert J. Maxwell In most ways this is a typical Warner Brothers product from the 30s or 40s. Plenty of action, fast dialog, a slap across the cheek, a punch in the snot locker, a young woman heartbroken, professional male solidarity, conflict within the organization, characters with names like Joe and Eddie and Spud, racing cars skidding perilously around the turns on a race track, and final redemption.Howard Hawks was fond of racing cars at the time, and remained so, but there isn't much of the director's signature visible here. Well, maybe some emerging part of a pattern. When practicable, the camera stays at eye level. And Ann Dvorak is hooked up with Cagney, she frets over whether she's "good enough." It must have been one of Hawks' favorite phrases because he used it, or variations on it, often over the next thirty years. Cary Grant to Jean Arthur in "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939), "You'd better be good." John Wayne to pal Ward Bond in "Rio Bravo" (1959), "You're not good enough." Sometimes Hawks adds or substitutes another favorite phrase: "Good luck to ya." The 20 and especially the 30s seem to have been decades in which hordes of daredevils were competing for speed records in one vehicle or another. Aviators like Wiley Post and Howard Hughes and Charles Lindbergh became famous. If you disappeared in the wild blue yonder, like Amelia Earhardt, they named a brand of luggage after you. The same thing was happening in automobile races here on earth. Half a dozen famous racing car drivers play themselves in this script. The only one that I'd ever heard of was Wilbur Shaw, but I assume at the time they had an abundance of celebrity.If there's nothing much new about the plot, there is one unusual scene. Frank McHugh, a Warners stalwart, is a driver whose car bursts into flame and who burns to death on the track. The shot of McHugh holding his face and screaming amid the flames is startling. And the other drivers having to pass through the smoke and the odor of McHugh's burning body is more literal than anything Hawks was to do with violence later in his career.

audiemurph Here is a movie with a split personality; any scene with James Cagney in it is captivating: Cagney plays a generally unlikable race-car driver with his usual brand of fanatical intensity, and the wonderful tics that make Cagney Cagney: physically and psychologically manhandling the men and women around him, adjusting his tie and jacket with a formal roll of his shoulders, spitting out lines like a machine gun. Wonderful stuff! But when he is off screen, you may or may not care that much. The pace is fast, with classic Warner Brothers 1930's dialogue, but... Ann Dvorak gets tiresome with her endless weeping and paranoid, irrational devotion to a man (Cagney) who mistreats her so...and Eric Linden, as Cagney's little brother, is just plain not appealing, and his harsh New York City accent doesn't help. Joan Blondell is his girlfriend. It doesn't work, because she is a beautiful mature woman, and Linden looks to be about 14 years old.There are some interesting things to look for in this film. Frank McHugh, Cagney's best and most ubiquitous Warner's supporting actor, plays, unusually, a wise married man, rather than his normal unattached, not too bright hanger-on. He does still get to do famous high-pitched "ha...ha" laugh a couple of times.Being a pre-Code film, look for unmarried couples in the film living in sin! And as noted by other writers, the old racing films are quite fascinating, but the endless close-ups of Cagney, Linden and NcHugh pretending to drive in front of obviously fake projection screens are tiresome indeed.Cagney's work toward the end of the film, when he plays a contrite and humbled Joe Greer, is extremely appealing, probably the best scenes in the movie. There is something quietly awesome about this little man with a critical mass of energy, desperately hanging on to a last thread of self-respect and dignity. These are beautifully acted indeed. And the scene where his tightly-wound emotions finally bubble to the surface and he collapses in sobs is definitely a highlight moment, one that I can watch over and over again.Keep your eyes on Cagney, and you won't be disappointed. And in these little throwaway movies that Warner relentlessly pumped out in the 30's, does the plot even really matter? Just give me more Cagney!

rajah524-3 The seven is for the racing footage; I'd have to give the film as a whole something lower; this looks like a standard "programmer" from the period. I've seen "TCR" several times, and this time decided to watch it to try to determine where the racing footage was shot and what kind of cars these are.I have to (somewhat educatedly) guess that we're looking at the old Jeffrey's Ranch Speedway in Burbank in the first racing sequence. It was pretty close to the Warner back lot, and (according to racing historian Harold Osmer) in operation from '31 to '35.The stands are covered, and there are a lot of large trees close by, as well as equestrian facilities, all three items definitely not the case at Legion Ascot or Huntington Beach. I've been told that Culver City's half mile of that period did not have any equestrian facilities, either, which deals with all the tracks in the region in '31 and '32.The cars in these shots are largely Ford-Model-A-block / any-odd-freer-breathing-head, rear-drive, backyard/filling-station bombs on Ford rails rather than anything from Harry Miller's shop in nearby Vernon, though there might be an early Miller 200, 220 or 255 (the basis of the famed Leo-Goosen-designed, "Offy" 255/270 built by Offenhauser & Brisko and, later, Meyer & Drake).This is doubtful, however, as those engines and complete (usually two- or three-year-old) Miller chassis rarely ran anywhere but Legion Ascot in the LA area at that time.The second (nighttime) sequence is at Legion Ascot, and its 20,000 seats look to be pretty full, which, even when they weren't shooting a feature film, were pretty full even in the nadir of the Great Depression. Veteran dirt track fans will note that Ascot's oiled surface runs pretty much dust-free compared to the old horse track in Burbank.The third group of action sequences shot at the Brickyard feature top-of-the-line Miller and Deusey rails, as well as several of the very best drivers of the period including Fred Frame and Billy Arnold, both Indy winners (1930 and 1932, respectively; Lou Schneider won the '31 race in the Bowes Seal Fast Special seen momentarily here). Careful listeners will hear the unmistakable snarl of the early "Offy" fours in the background.Sadly, the sound era was just getting underway as the legendary Miller 91s and the incredible board tracks they ran on were phased out in '29. Open-wheel racing in the '30s was -good-, but OW racing in the previous decade (at tracks like Beverly Hills and Culver City) was as big -- and spectacular, and fast -- then as NASCAR is now on mile ovals. The Indy scenes feature the (more nearly "stock car") two-seaters and "poor man's" engines that were mandated at the time to reduce costs and break the high-tech/high-buck, Miller stranglehold of the late '20s. There were Deusies, Fords and even Studebakers running the big tracks in those days, but Harry Miller's cars and engines continued to dominate.

MartinHafer Jimmy Cagney plays a race car driver who's at the top of his game. When he returns home to visit family, he's shocked to find that his much younger brother has also taken up racing. Despite Jimmy loving his work, he knows it's dangerous and wants better for his kid brother. This sets the stage for a major falling out between them and eventually the young whippersnapper actually surpasses Cagney--leading to a dandy conclusion.This is a very good, though not especially great film by Jimmy Cagney towards the beginning of his career. The acting, writing and direction are competent. However, just seven years later, the studio remade this movie--practically word-for-word in places and even using some of the same auto racing footage!!! Considering that the remake wasn't quite as good, lacked originality and lacked Cagney, I say it's best to stick with the original.By the way, remaking movies--often using pretty much the original script--was a common practice in the 1930s--especially at Warner Brothers. Again and again, films were recycled--sometimes only a couple years later!