All day rain and pouring as I write. Cold too. Hoping for warmth and sunshine soon. I did watch a movie tonight : "Jimmy The Gent" (1934), starring James Cagney and a young Bette Davis. Cagney made a bunch of pictures for Warner Brothers in the 30s in which he played variations on his fast talking, Tough Guy Persona. Very often he played gangsters or convicts, but he could also do comedy (and he could sing and dance, a very talented actor), and so Warners set him up in lighter fare too, like "Jimmy The Gent", a 67 minute screwball comedy about an unscrupulous private investigator (Cagney) who makes false claims on the estates of recently deceased millionaires who have no heirs. What he does is to create false "relatives" of the wealthy deceased person, by hiring local crooks and coaching them as to how they should impersonate a "newly discovered heir" to the magnate's fortune.
Bette Davis works for a rival firm. Her boss is an "heir chaser" too, but he is looking for real relatives, no matter how far removed. He sees himself as legitimate compared to Cagney, but in reality both men are in it for the money, the 50% cut they can get from winning a judgement in court. They create illegitimate inheritance claims so that the money of the deceased will not wind up in the government's hands but in their hands instead.
This being a Screwball Comedy (an early version thereof), there must be a Love Interest to play the two lead characters off of one another and to create dramatic tension. Here we have Cagney the Unscrupulous and Bette Davis the Honest Investigator, who actually tries to find a family relative to inherit the fortune in question. There is still self-interest on the part of Davis and her boss, who will net a hefty commission, but they feel altruistic about their pursuits. Bette Davis' character used to work for James Cagney; she quit because of his underhanded methods.......but she is secretly in love with him. And he knows it. And he is in love with her, too.
So that's what the movie is really about.
Cagney could easily play a Crook With A Good Heart Who Wants To Go Straight, if only he can Get The Girl.
These types of early Hollywood movies were short and to the point. There was a format back then of short films (not "shorts" which were only 20-30 minutes) than ran between 62 and 75 minutes. There were a ton of films of this length, most running right around 67 to 72 minutes. Perhaps they were produced to be shown as part of double features, I don't know. But the thing was, as always, a story had to be told, and with these movies it had to be told quickly but without feeling rushed. Directors had to work with quickly cut scenes and fast dialogue, and certain actors became very adept at working in this style. James Cagney was a master of it. Bette Davis, as she developed her talent, could play anything; she was the original Meryl Streep, but in "Jimmy The Gent", as Cagney's love interest and foil, she matches him note for note.
This is another movie where I am writing a long review, but it's worth it, not only for the performances (in a stylized studio movie), but also for the writing, which is always something I look at. In this case, a scheme is cooked up by Cagney to win Bette Davis back, and this becomes the centerpiece of the movie. It involves double and triple dealing in setting up fraudulent marriages to an heir to a fortune, who just happens to be a suspected murderer.
It is way too complicated to describe, and that is my point. This was the skill of these early screenwriters (and of Michael Curtiz of later "Casablanca" fame, who directed), that they were able to construct - in short bursts of rapid fire dialogue, usually between two characters - a fast moving storyline that moved forward with each scene. Action almost always took place indoors, in a room, and the camera focus was I suppose what would be called a "two shot". I didn't go to film school, so I am not certain, but the point is that a formula was in place for these films, to crank them out because Hollywood has always been a business, but by the same token it is clear that the artists involved in the making of the films wanted to present the best work they were capable of.
The whole point was to entertain, to tell a story, and to show what you could do, to show your style.
Huge credit must go to the early cameramen and lighting directors of Studio Era Hollywood, who created the whole concept of Movie Stars with their ability to light the actors to maximise their features and personalities. The directors and cameramen of the 1930s created the Larger Than Life Screen Actor that we still see today.
The actors supplied the Star Quality, and without them there would never have been a movie business.
It was the unique quality of each actor's image onscreen, as it was perceived by the audience, that created the myth of the Movie Star.
And it was because of multi-talented actors like James Cagney and Bette Davis and so many others that the magic of The Play moved from stage to screen, where charisma was magnified.
I love the Movie Stars, as you know, but it is important to remember how incredibly talented they were, and to remember what they created - an entire industry which has had world cultural influence - and it is also important to remember that, in the early scripts of the Studio System, the emphasis was on a happy ending, no matter what the characters had been through.
I mention these things because it is important not to simply go through each day by rote, but to instead think about your life in the Big Picture. That is what the creative artists of early Hollywood were trying to show : human stories in the Big Picture, which always had a resolution to problems, and which never ended with the characters just going through the motions.
Happily Ever After meant something.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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