#CHICAGO 1930 REVIEW MOVIE#
#CHICAGO 1930 REVIEW FREE#

It is not his fault that he is made to provide a denouement by falling into the most puerile of traps.

Robinson gives an interesting and authentic characterization as Dominic, a resourceful and intelligent underworld power. The New York Times calls this one “mediocre entertainment”, but fawns over Robinson:.Considering Swifty survived his jump from a moving train into a river, it seems to indicate that the stickers worked. It’s unlikely that the filmmakers intended the character of Swifty to be associated with Germany (his surname, Dorgan, is Gaelic), and the stickers on the case were related to the pre-war association of the swastika– with luck. While Hitler had already adopted the swastika as a symbol of the Nazi movement by 1925, it wasn’t made the symbol of Germany until 1935.

#CHICAGO 1930 REVIEW MOVIE#

Swifty’s bag seen several times in the movie has a pair of swastikas on it.

White jokes at one point that Robinson “looks like the heavy in Way Down East.” The villain of that silent classic is played by Lowell Sherman, who co-starred with White in the lost 1928 film Mad Hour.

#CHICAGO 1930 REVIEW FREE#

All of my images are taken by me– please feel free to reuse with credit! It’s hard to watch, sad to see, and the movie does her no favors. But she’s clearly rough around the acting edges, even for 1930. At least they have Hamilton purposefully playing a heel this go around that helps with him.īack to Alice White, who cuts quite a slim flapper figure but constantly looks like she’s about to stomp her feet and run to her dressing room: she’s cute. The romance between White and Hamilton is gravy and pretty standard stuff for the era, a sort of love/hate relationship that lacks much of a spark. There’s some wacky palookas (including Frank McHugh, who isn’t even doing his trademark laugh at this point) and sudden murders, a cop who is after the gang, and the all important unwitting confession that seals the deal. The rest of it is rough gangster movie stuff, with the genre still getting etched out. He gets some dynamic scenery chewing time, and the climax– which involves him hiding in the darkened speakeasy, surrounded by cops– is moody and stands out from all that came before.Įnjoy 1930 special effects, where you can literally see through Alice White’s head. Robinson, in his last film before becoming a star with Little Caesar, gets only to growl in the margins of the picture as the heavy. While Cagney was following Lew Ayres around sheepishly in Doorway to Hell around this time, here Edward G. Things grow complicated when it turns out that Swifty is alive and well, and he only agrees to help Polly keep her secret so long as she only puts Dominic away and helps keep his nose clean in front of the increasingly paranoid gangster. She impersonates the wife of dead gangster Swifty ( Hamilton) to get in good with Dominic ( Robinson), who is deeply mistrusting but admires the way that Polly is easy on the eyes. Speaking of a straight face, let’s run down this plot before it gives me a headache: seeing her cop younger brother murdered in front of her, Polly ( White) decides to revenge herself on the gangster leader who ordered the hit.

Chicago 1930 review