THE ROARING TWENTIES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 77, 13 December 1940, Page 51

THE ROARING TWENTIES

(Warner Bros.)

Y far the most successful literary panorama yet achieved of the American 1920’s has been John Dos Passos’s trilogy " U.S.A."; this

in spite of the fact that not all of "U.S.A." is concerned with the 1920's. The technique adopted in the piecing together of "U.S.A." was a novel one and remarkably effective-the story of fictitious but representative and significant Americans developed against a backgrourd of actual history, the impact of contemporary events being heightened by " word-newsreels " and biographies of contemporary Americans like J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Veblen, Eugene Debs. The effect in the book is almost cinematic. Now comes a film " The Roaring Twenties" which tackles its theme in very nearly the same way. It is not the first time this sort of thing has been done, but I am pretty sure it is the first time this technique has been used to deal with this particular phase of American life. "The Roaring Twenties" is the story of prohibition and the bootlegger. To tell it, Warner Brothers have taken a representative bootlegger (James Cagney) and told his story against a background of newsreel shots with a voice (double of the " March of Time" voice) plugging home the swift sequence of events during those roaring days. It succeeds admirably. With the social consciousness that one has come to expect from Warner Brothers, the film starts off with the premise that soldiers returning from the First World War had no alternative to crime, because there were no jobs left for them. Cagney, a "demobbed" soldier, who is accidentally drawn into

the bootleg game, soon decides to make his own liquor, then blossoms out into a "big shot,’ with the inevitable accompaniments of graft, corruption and " hijacking." Reaching the height of the bootlegger’s career, the story then sweeps on through the stock market crash, to repeal, to depression. For Cagney it is the full turn of the wheel, and depression finds him driving a taxi, ill-kept, ill-fed, tortured by his humiliation, but refusing to admit that the days of the big graft king are coming to an end and that there is no more place for him and his sort in society. In detail "The Roaring Twenties" is also the story of Cagney’s love for Priscilla Lane, Priscilla Lane’s love for Jeffry Lynn, and of Glady George’s love for Cagney. All the usual accoutrements of a gang picture are here-shootings, bludgeonings, raids, tough talk. But because of the significance given to the story and because of the fine acting, of Cagney and Humphrey Bogart especially, it is easy to forget that it has all been done before. It is Cagney at his best-taut, highpitched, brooding, menaceful, pathetic. Bogart’s part is just plain rat, the purpose being, naturally, to throw sympathetic emphasis on Cagney. Typical shot: Cagney making finest imported dry gin dn his bath. Best scene: Cagney, disappointed in love, apologising for knocking down his friend and _ rival, Jeffry Lynn.