A Lion Is in the Streets

I am a massive fan of James Cagney as an actor. I've loved some of the films he starred in, tolerated more. This one falls into the second camp. It is by no means a bad or unworthy film, but it really fails to compel.

Cagney is of course, irreproachable and effortlessly walks away with the film, but he just isn't quite as compelling a figure here as in "White Heat", "Angels with Dirty Faces" or that splendid musical, "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Perhaps it is because the character is really more predictable than most of his characters; based on the Huey Long template. There was not the sense that I was rooting for his character in the same odd way that I usually do when he is essaying a villainous part.

The film is visually quite opulent, but hardly overpoweringly. Perhaps monochrome would have better suited the film's fairly straight forward moral message. The characters, save Cagney's demagogue, are far from that interesting, and play little part, other than be part of the rural "mob" that Cagney is inciting, or part of the slick, gangster-swayed metropolitan set, who replenish Cagney's corruption.

This film just isn't compelling enough; it has a lack of interesting incident, character or dialogue, and while it is morally in a worthy cause (in the era of McCarthy) it is too small a fry in the largely incendiary career of Cagney.

Rating:- ***/*****

The idea of this movie is an interesting one and the political shenanigans are convincing but unfortunately the performance by James Cagney is distinctly over the top. A certain amount of playing to the gallery is appropriate to campaigning but the constant declaiming by Cagney is very wearing; to say nothing of the singing and hammy marching!

It's a shame because some of the supporting performances are excellent, particularly Barbara Hale and Jeanne Cagney.

I would have given this a lower score were it not for the worthwhile content; it's a pity that was let down by the realisation.

A Lion Is In the Streets wastes enough talent for at least a half-dozen good movies. It had an excellent director, Raoul Walsh, but a bad script. James Cagney is energetic in the lead, as a Huey Long-like Southern pol, but his accent is poor, and he seems out of place running around the bayous in a white suit. The fine supporting cast,--Barbara Hale, Anne Francis, John McIntire, Warner Anderson--don't have much to work with, and the dialogue is mediocre throughout. Franz Waxman's dynamic, stirring score is wasted also, and deserves a better film. The movie looks anachronistic for its year of release (1953), and might have worked better had it been made in black and white, five or ten years earlier, while color just makes it seem artificial and unreal. I kept on expecting Lon Chaney, Jr. to turn into an alligator man every time he showed up.

More like a bull in a china shop! Cagney completely unfettered here, carrying everything before him in a typical barn-storming performance of sheer bravura.

Forget all the succeeding shortcomings of the plot, they're there from the start and almost far too numerous to mention, but let's just throw some in - like Cagney's whirlwind romance with too-young-for-him school-marm Barbara Hale and even more ridiculous fling with far-too-much-younger-for-him Anne Francis as a wild-child with a crush on our hero, who in a "hath no fury" scorned moment improbably tries to feed Cagney's new bride to the crocodiles, mix in a plumb-loco trial scene where Cagney props up a dying witness to testify for his innocence even as he expires on the stand and grandstand it all with Cagney's "Kingfish" character Hank Martin getting shot at point-blank range by the widow of the same dying witness when Cagney's treachery in thrall of power is exposed, just at the point when he's fathered his first child and lost the election to boot!.

Only Raoul Walsh could whip all this into, I hesitate to call it shape and in under 90 minutes at that. Shot in gleaming technicolour, with hordes of well-marshaled crowd scenes and with Cagney threatening to self-combust from the off, this has to be one of the most preposterous films I've ever watched. You could argue with some justification that the great man chews more scenery than Hungry Horace, but best just to surrender yourself to the whirlwind, suspend all disbelief and see where it deposits you. It may not be Oz, but there's certainly a wizard at work here.

Cagney (clever & aggressive) is seen peddling his wares in the back-hills country of a cotton-growing southern state... He falls for beautiful Barbara Hale, a sympathetic grade-school teacher from up North... They wed and honeymoon in a small house supplied by aristocratic Warner Anderson...

Watchful to the possibilities of a political career in which he could easily become the governor of the state, Cagney increases his interest in a blonde tramp called Flamingo (Anne Francis), a violent and turbulent woman, who in a fit of jealousy nearly gets rid of her competitor (Barbara Hale) in a premeditated swamp accident...

Barbara Hale is sweet, charming and understanding, but she has the least showy role in a film full to the disintegrating point with well-delineated colorful characters performed by a very experienced cast...

Raoul Walsh's direction keeps the film moving lively and Harry Stradling's excellent Technicolor photography captures the very atmosphere of the deep South...