The Roaring Twenties 1939 123movies

Watch: The Roaring Twenties 1939 123movies, Full Movie Online – After the WWI Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie’s partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere..
Plot: After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie’s partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
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Ratings:

	7.9/10 Votes: 14,303
	100% | RottenTomatoes
	N/A | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 175 Popularity: 8.172 | TMDB

Reviews:

One of the Best of Warner’s Gangster Films!
“The Roaring Twenties” more or less marked the end of Warner Bros. gangster films popular during the 1930s. For the next few years WWII would form the backdrop of their action films.

This one is full of action and memorable characters due largely to the presence of legendary director Raoul Walsh and its stellar cast.

Three soldiers meet on the WWI battlefield in 1918. One is the all good lawyer Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), one the thoroughly bad George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) and the third, an everyman named Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney). Eddie is smitten with a girl, Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane) who has been corresponding with him from home.

When the war ends Eddie returns to New York and hooks up with buddy Danny Green (Frank McHugh) who is a Gabie. Eddie goes to meet Jean but is disappointed to learn that she is just a teenager. Unable to find work, Eddie is forced to share the driving of Danny’s cab. In the meantime, prohibition takes effect and Eddie discovers that bootlegging is the way to get rich. At the onset he meets saloon girl Panama Smith (Gladys George) who turns out to be his only friend.

Fast forward to 1924 and Eddie re-discovers Jean in a chorus line and decides to take a hand in her career. Eddie is now hopelessly in love with Jean much to the dismay of Panama. Jean however, is in love with Lloyd who has turned up as Eddie’s lawyer. One night while hijacking a load of booze from rival gangster Nick Brown (Paul Kelly), Eddie meets up with George Hally (what are the chances of that?) who works for Brown. Hally decides to double cross Brown and throw in with Eddie. All the while Eddie is buying up taxis until he has immersed a fleet of 2,000 cabs.

Everything is running smoothly until Hally begins to get his own ambitions and sets up Brown to Murder Eddie. The plot fails. Meanwhile Jean leaves Eddie and runs off with Lloyd and Eddie begins to drink. At the same time come the stock market crash of 1929 and Eddie is ruined. Hally however, didn’t play the stocks and buys out Eddie’s cab business for a small figure and leaves Eddie with but one cab for himself.

Eddie hits the skids along with the ever faithful Panama until Hally threatens Jean and Lloyd and………….

Cagney as usual dominates the picture. He is his usual cocky Irish tough guy but with character flaws. His love for Jean ultimately is what destroys him. Lane contributes a couple of classic songs (in her own voice) as Jean. Bogart as the thoroughly evil Hally gives us a preview of the Bogart tough guy image to come in the 40s. Gladys George almost steals the picture from Cagney as the tragic Panama and McHugh is sympathetic as Danny.

Oddly enough, for a gangster picture, there are no major characters in respect of crusading cops or district attorneys. All of the action is between the gangsters.

Cagney would not appear in another gangster film for ten years until “White Heat” (1949).

“To touch every man, woman and child”
The cycle of gangster movies made at Warner Brothers in the 1930s, regardless of who was in them, who directed them or how their stories panned out, all had one thing in common. They came at their audiences at breakneck pace. While their ostensible aim was to condemn violence and lawlessness, their real agenda was one of thrills, danger and nonstop action.

The odd thing about The Roaring Twenties, is that there is not really a lot of action or typical gangster business in it, at least not at the beginning. Bootlegging is seen as a relatively tame activity, and criminality as something any reasonable person could slide into. There aren’t even any scenes of gangland violence until 55 minutes in. However it still has that typical crime drama speed and punch. A lot of the impact comes from the regular background-info montages, a staple at Warner Brothers but rarely done better. Most of the shots are close-ups and almost all of them feature some sharp movement, like a kind of visual roller-coaster ride. A lot of thought has gone into how each shot will fit with the next. During the montage showing the effects of prohibition, we get one shot of a car crashing straight towards the camera, followed by a quick dolly in on a row of bottles, giving a dizzying push-pull effect.

Director Raoul Walsh also gives a racy feel to even the more straightforward scenes. He gets the actors constantly moving as they talk, and the camera stays tight on the action, constantly back- and- forth with the players. The first half hour is like a whistle-stop tour as we are buffeted from one scene to the next, and the dialogue is snapped out like gunfire, making up for the lack of real shooting. Even in the relatively sedate scenes towards the middle, where Cagney gets together with Priscilla Lane, Walsh still keeps a sense of nervous edginess with extras milling about in the background, with only one or two genuinely tranquil moments here and there to highlight something of importance or emotional intensity.

The Warner Brothers style had its ideal star in James Cagney, and here he is the usual bundle of shrugs, twitches and cracking delivery, albeit far from his best performance. He simply slots into the general pattern of punches and wisecracks, rather than commanding the screen as he did in Angels with Dirty Faces. His love interest Priscilla Lane makes a disappointingly dull leading lady, although she does have a lot of charm and character when singing. However the best turn of The Roaring Twenties is by alternate female lead Gladys George, billed lower but with comparable screen time and oodles more screen presence. George is the perfect moll, full of vibrant personality, and yet behind her eyes you can see the great weight of sadness. Her Panama Smith is the only truly real-looking character in this drama.

And this emotional strand brought in by the Gladys George character is important to The Roaring Twenties. While every gangster movie of the time finished up with the hero’s ignoble demise, perhaps none before it had such a feeling of tragedy and nostalgia. It’s no coincidence that the movie’s signature tune is “Come to me, my melancholy baby”, for this is the most poignant of all the Warner’s gangster flicks. And yet this aspect is still underdeveloped, because this is still at its roots a standard genre movie, an uncomplicated action package. It’s actually shame that in those days a picture like this had to be a certain kind of thing, because with a little more reflection and credibility The Roaring Twenties could have been a truly moving experience.

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 46 min (106 min) (Turner library print)
Budget 0
Revenue 0
Status Released
Rated Passed
Genre Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Director Raoul Walsh
Writer Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay, Robert Rossen
Actors James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Priscilla Lane
Country United States
Awards 3 wins & 1 nomination
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Mono
Aspect Ratio 1.37 : 1
Camera N/A
Laboratory Warner Bros. Studio Laboratory, USA
Film Length (11 reels)
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm