Cagney, mayor of hell You can enjoy the correctness of the statements in the Republic of Shkid, and you can look more closely at other similar films. The enlargement produces a very rare delicacy - a joint work by Michael Curtitz and Archie Mayo "The Mayor of Hell."
Needless to say, the film came out more than sharp because it was not only hooked on the subject of the penitentiary system, but also directly pointed to the real problems of corruption and juvenile justice. Cagney's participation pleasantly complemented the film, although he played not a positive hero at all, but an ordinary reshalu. More gravitating to the gangster style, his character not only helps the powerful of this world, but also gets a job as a manager in a children's colony. Here the hero is transformed and the plot moves twisted by the author are included.
Fixing the torture of boys gets to the very point of identifying not just the weakness of the head of the institution, but the total weakness of the system itself. The same weakness is evidenced by the situation in which the gangster not only finds himself at the head of the institution, but also really defends the rights and freedoms of the children. Well, the line with the rebellion is completely beyond praise - violence goes off the scale, seemingly closing all reasonable ways to retreat. This uncertainty, irregularity and arrhythmic make the picture one of the deepest “prison” tapes.
Some excessive bravura Cagney gives a shade of vaudevolence to the tape itself, but given the small timekeeping everything works. The finale is unpredictable, and moralizing propaganda notes in which you can suspect more than one film with the participation of Cagney of those years give way to tough social rhetoric. At the same time, the creators think about the viewer - not allowing the frame to bring everything to the boring pathos of "Sleeping" (remember this film by Levinson?), despite the fact that there is no denying the possibility that the "Mayor of Hell" had the same events. Here at the head of the corner is fascinating for the viewer, and then everything else.
9 out of 10