Angels With Dirty Faces: A Movie Review

“Angel’s with Dirty Faces” 1938, 1 hour 37 minutes, b&w

“Angels with Dirty Faces” stars James Cagney and Pat O’Brien and features Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role. The movie was released in 1938, during Hollywood’s Golden Era and tells the story of two men who grew up as rough kids in crowded slums of New York City’s lower eastside. One of the kids, Rocky, played by James Cagney, was caught by the police and sent to Reformed School where he learned to become a very successful mobster. The other kid, Jerry, played by Pat O’Brien, was able to run faster than Rocky and escaped the police. He becomes a priest and goes back into the same tenement area to minister, with the goal of reaching the loss boys there before they make some of the mistakes that Rocky and he had made.

The movie explores the friendship as well as the conflict and tension that exist between Rocky and Father Jerry Connelly. There is no doubt that Jerry loves Rocky, yet as a Priest he must speak out against crime and leads a community crusade to clean up the graft and corruption in the city. Although the two childhood friends are on opposite sides, you also get the idea that Father Jerry is Rocky’s only true friend. When Rocky’s partners in crime decide to kill the priest for making their lives difficult, Rocky steps in and there’s the big gangster shoot-out. Rocky kills his two associates, and then as he tries to flee, kills several policemen. The movie ends with Rocky on death row. Father Jerry Connelly comes to see him and asks for one last favor. He wants Rocky to go to chair as a coward. It’s an odd request, but the Father Connelly knows the boys in the tenement look up to Rocky and wants to follow in his footsteps. If these kids see Rocky as a coward, it’ll shatter their allusions about the glamour of crime. This request means that Rocky has to drop his tough guy act. He doesn’t want to do this, giving up the last thing he has, his dignity, but he does. You’re not sure why. Is it because of his friendship with Jerry? Is it because Rocky really does have a heart for the kids? Or does he at the end just stop acting like the big guy, allowing his real self comes through? Whatever way, the next newspaper had bold front page headlines telling that Rocky died a coward.

The movie ends with Father Jerry Connelly going down into the boiler room hideout of the kids who’d idolized Rocky Sullivan. The boys are reading the paper about Rocky’s execution. They can’t believe Rocky died yellow. Father Connelly confirms the rumor, and then invites the boys to come up with him and “to say a prayer for a boy who couldn’t run as fast as I could.” With that line, you get a sense that Jerry had gotten a break in life, a break for which he was grateful.I enjoyed this movie because it raised many questions. The director shows Rocky’s rise in the crime world was related to his education in reform school and later in prison. His counterpart, Jerry, received a “break” and became a priest. Many of us also receive breaks in our lives, but do we realize it? Cagney portrayed Rocky as a guy always in control of his emotions and the situation at hand. The character comes across as a strong actor and you’re never sure if you really understand what he’s really feeling or if you’re seeing the true self, for no one can be that cool all the time. In the movie, both Father Connelly and Rocky vie for the allegiance of the rough kids in the neighborhood. Outside of the two of them, there are really no other adult role models. I’m sure this set up was to contrast the “good” and the “bad.” Yet, as we see in Rocky, there is a great appeal in the “bad,” as Rocky overshadowed Father Connelly and vies for the audience’s attention. At the end, the only way Jerry can reach the kids is by creating a lie (that Rocky was a coward). He does this in order to destroy a myth, but it leaves you with an uneasy feeling that the only way good can triumphant over evil is by compromising its principles. However, the idea that Rocky does something for the good of others, something known only to God, Jerry and himself, is an example of a good deed.

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