Wed 23 Jan 2019
Movie Review: PICTURE SNATCHER (1933).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[8] Comments
PICTURE SNATCHER. Warner Brothers, 1933. James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis, Alice White, Ralf Harolde, Robert Emmett O’Connor. Director: Lloyd Bacon.
What this above average little semi-crime drama has going for it most of all can be summed up in two words: James Cagney. An an ex-con looking for a new life, he’s on the screen for most of the movie and in none of those scenes is he sitting or standing still. He’s on the go every minute. Although short in stature, he can make you tired just watching him, as he kids and connives his way around his new career as a news photographer for a sleazy bottom-of-the-barrel newspaper.
Aiding him in his new life, after he’s dumped the mob he was once the leader of, is Ralph Bellamy as the paper’s sympathetic city editor. Lusting for him — no other word will do — is Alice White, the paper’s “sob sister” writer who — surprisingly enough really is a damned good rewrite person in her own right.
But Danny Kean (Cagney) has eyes only for the daughter of the cop who ran him in three years ago, and all kinds of complications ensure from this one small remarkable coincidence, the kind that oculd happen only in movies like this.
Being a pre-Code movie, there some fairly explicit innuendos between Cagney and Miss White, plus some revealing shots of the latter in her lingerie. All the more bonus, you’d have to say, to Cagney’s bold, bravura performance in this one.
January 23rd, 2019 at 9:14 pm
Cagney’s energy and a few pre-code touches of spice are about all this one has going for it, particularly compared to some of his other early films.
This one is pretty much a throw-away, it feels like something they rushed Cagney into because of the success of PUBLIC ENEMY, the kind of thing they also stuck Edward G. Robinson in right after LITTLE CAESAR when they were struggling to figure what to do with an actor who wasn’t in the usual mode of leading man. Luckily for Cagney and Robinson they didn’t struggle half as long or as much as they did trying to figure out what to do with Bogie after PETRIFIED FOREST.
This one is worth seeing for Cagney and for the pre-code angle, but as a movie it is strictly B programmer level in all but leading man.
January 23rd, 2019 at 10:59 pm
I don’t disagree, David. I liked it more than you did, but if anyone’s looking for a solid statement about newspapers’ roles in society, say, this isn’t the movie to do it. There were times when I thought it might try, but whenever any kind of important issue came up, it always seemed to verge away from it almost immediately.
Take the photo Cagney takes of the woman in the electric chair, for example (which was based on an actual incident). He seems to struggle with idea before going ahead with it, but when he does so, the only consequences are that it gets him in trouble with his girl friend, the cop’s daughter. Nor is this the only such example. Conning the fireman who’s just lost his wife in a fire is another.
I don’t think anybody in charge had the faintest idea of doing more, and in that regard, yes, that would qualify this movie as only throwaway entertainment to me as well.
January 24th, 2019 at 7:39 pm
I don’t dislike the film, but I don’t think anyone put much effort into it and it feels as if they had a property and fit Cagney into it, rather than creating something to take advantage of Cagney’s unique persona.
It’s a decent time killer, but it doesn’t have the usual punch of newspaper films of the era, and the ex gangster turned picture snapper was pretty hard to swallow.
January 24th, 2019 at 8:34 pm
I hadn’t thought of the movie in that way — whether it was designed for Cagney or if they just put him into it — but if it wasn’t the former, and he was in it only by accident, he made it own, flawed story line or not. There would be no reason to watch this now, except for pre-Code movie lovers, if he weren’t in it.
January 24th, 2019 at 8:10 pm
David, you are probably right for this era, but not then. The public’s romance with (real life) gangsters had not come close to running its course.
January 24th, 2019 at 8:44 pm
The idea that a guy like Cagney could walk out of prison after three years there pn;y to decide to become a news photographer was a weak one. but given the premise (suspension of disbelief), there’s no doubt that Cagney had the gangster mentality that audiences wanted. Even though he had the love of good girl behind him to keep him on the straight and narrow, he doesn’t really manage it — and his pushing around the other women and dumping them the way he does, even more so than in THE PUBLIC ENEMY — I think Warners had their target audience very well in mind.
It’s a B movie for sure, but there’s a lot in it to think and talk about afterward, or so’s true for me, as you’ve discovered!
January 26th, 2019 at 3:04 am
Barry, Steve,
No argument the gangster bit was designed to feed an audience hungry for just that fare, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to the detriment of the film. I think the fact that despite giving the audience Cagney as a gangster who roughs up dames as in PUBLIC ENEMY this doesn’t seem to have done all that well suggests the audience wasn’t as hungry for gangster fare as it would have had to have been to sell this one.
I have no reason to think Warner’s target audience responded to this one with anything like the enthusiasm the studio clearly hoped by caging so many elements from the better film.
It likely made money, and a nice profit, and it didn’t hurt Cagney, but it doesn’t seem to have done him or anyone involved a lot of good either. I never meant to suggest it doesn’t move or that is doesn’t at least entertain, but like some of the misfires Warner’s had with Robinson early on it isn’t even a pale shadow of the films that made either man overnight sensations.
The fact they seemingly hammered Cagney’s character from PUBLIC ENEMY into this suggests the studio wasn’t quite sure what they had in Cagney or what to do with him other than try to exploit the better picture no matter how awkward the fit. If this was written for Cagney it’s an odd choice leading me to think this was something they had on hand and rushed out without a lot of thought changing what was likely an already existing script to fit Cagney’s hit film persona.
I could be wrong, but I would be surprised to find this was originally written for Cagney specifically.
January 26th, 2019 at 11:46 am
David, exactly right. They did not know what they had in Cagney. But Warner was not the only studio to misunderstand talent. For example, early at MGM they thought Gable a taller variation of Jimmy.
The beginning of the sound era brought problems all their own, not just about voices, but style, relationship with the camera and other things, which is why we sometimes see clumsy work by Gable Cagney, or Robinson.