Bogie's sniveling cowardice was quite appropriate for this character -- a bully who turns to mush when he suddenly finds himself at Cagney's mercy.
Production Code Administration or not, Bogie (as someone else here points out) was still a couple of years away from establishing himself as a star and establishing the character that made him a star. Between 1936 and 1940 he made more than two dozen films for Warner Brothers, and while he was a featured player in most of them, he never was the "star" of any of them. He played a few good guys ("China Clipper," "Marked Woman," "Crime School," "They Drive by Night") but mostly he played gangsters, and the roles were usually rather one-dimensional (including the three films he made with Cagney, in which Jimmy was definitely the "good" bad guy). Bogie finally broke out of that rut in "High Sierra," playing a very sympathetic criminal, and that role broke the path that led him to "The Maltese Falcon" and his signature role as Sam Spade. But in "The Roaring Twenties" Bogie is still the bad guy, a thoroughly bad guy. He's cool and in control only so long as he has a gun in hand.
One encounters some truly silly posts on this site -- particularly from people who think that older movies are invalid or irrelevant unless updated to reflect "modern" sensibilities and intellectual fashions. The notion of "updating" a film like this one is patently ridiculous. The value of films like "The Roaring Twenties" is precisely that they are documents of their times -- in this case, a popular perception of the Prohibition Era a few years after Prohibition ended. Warner Brothers made this movie for 1939 audiences, not for posterity -- and that's what makes it all the more instructive to see, and enjoy, both for understanding that attitudes of the era and to see how Bogie's character developed over several years of filmmaking.
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Fenris Fil
17 years ago
Bogey was pretty much a real nasty piece of work that whole movie.
From my perspective as a big fan of Bogeys Noir period films it was kinda uncomfortable to accept him in that role, but I have seen him there before and I knew full well what to expect. But it's a bit like seeing comedy actors in really serious roles. When your used to seeing an actor do one type of film with similar roles/style it's hard to accept him in others. Actually reminds me of when I saw an old (serious) Leslie Nielson film and I kept expecting him to say something funny, even though I knew he wouldn't.
Having said that, he was possible a bit over the top in this film compared to other films of that period where he played scumbags(that I've seen), like Dead End, Angels with Dirty Faces and the Petrified Forrest. It was like they couldn't do enough to make you dislike him. That was pretty clear from the Army scene.
Not that it was a flaw though. They had to contrast him with Cagneys character, who despite being bad was meant to have our emotional investment. These days they would probably have made him a Joe Pesche style psycho gangster. So maybe he doesn't seem so over the top by contrast.
It also reminds me a bit of the end of the origional Scarface, compared to the remake (for those that have seen both).
--
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
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Ralph Monroe
16 years ago
I think he was just as over-the-top in Angels with Dirty Faces. In fact,he was portrayed as even more craven and cowardly in that film than Twenties. And in Dead End, while not a coward, he was certainly a psycho. I mean, he shot Joel McRea in the back! He even threatened his own mother! I can't remember if he went out as a coward in The Oklahoma Kid Kid , though. Anyway, I actually liked the rotten Bogart better than the more palatable one.
So, to sum it up in legal terminology: Get lost, you bum.
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CharteredStreets
16 years ago
Watching it with modern eyes, I found his cowardice a little jarring at the end (loved the movie though) because to me he seemed like someone who, horrible as he was, wouldn't be scared of death; he seemed like the type of guy who made it by fearing nothing and being willing to double-cross anyone. As a twenty-one year old watching a movie almost 7 decades old I found that a little jarring, and I don't think we should deny that watching old movies now we see things differently. I like to know the historical context but that doesn't mean that I should attempt to watch a movie as the contemporary audience would have.
If I have to tell you again, we're gonna take it outside and I'm gonna show you what it's like!
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