WARNING: SPOILERS

Here’s the three-act structure in a nutshell:

1. C’mon, join my Dad’s mob!
2. Oh no, why did you join my Dad’s mob?
3. Oh my god, don’t fight my Dad’s mob. They’ll kill you!

If you were pitching it today, you’d say it’s “Sergeant York” meets “Little Caesar.” A nice-guy, sharpshootin’ country boy who works at the county fair and is known simply as The Kid (Gary Cooper), is dating the daughter of a prohibition gangster, Nan (Sylvia Sidney), who thinks the beer racket is just fine and wants her boyfriend to join up. He’s not interested.

“You’ll never do a day’s time,” she insists. “Trust Pop. You play ball and the mob won’t let you down.”

So: You can’t trust Pop and the mob will let you down. Oh, and you’ll do time. Or she will.

Good with a gun in the first act
Despite all that, there’s real artistry in the early going, and I guess the credit goes to director Rouben Mamoulian, whom I knew little about, but whose movies are in the directors section at Scarecrow Video—meaning he’s considered something of an auteur. Though his name sounds vaguely French, he’s Armenian, born in 1897 in the old Russian empire, then moved to England, then to the U.S. in the 1920s.

Early on, involved in nefarious activity, Pop drives by and winks at Nan. She winks back. Then we get a straight-on shot of her winking. Turns out she’s now at a shooting gallery at a fair, taking aim at the targets … and missing. Everyone’s missing. They’re all no good. And one older gentleman takes aim across Nan until she takes the rifle out of his hand. “Hey, look out!” she says. Because he’s almost going to hit the guy in the white hat running the stand. At which point, we get a close up of the white hat from behind. And the wearer of the white hat turns around with a little cigarette in his mouth and smiles right at the camera. It’s Gary Cooper.

What a great fucking movie-star intro. Put it up there with Rick in “Casablanca” and Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” And dozens I'm forgetting. 

You know that whole “Find someone who looks at you” meme? Well, find someone who looks at you the way Sylvia Sidney looks at Gary Cooper in this movie. It’s almost like there’s a little electric current running through her, she’s so giddy with love. At the same time, their early conversation feels natural—during the funhouse mirror scene, and with the hot dogs, and some part of the beach scene. It almost feels adlibbed. Was it? Maybe that’s just good acting and directing.

Again, she wants Kid to joins Dad’s mob but he’s no way. Then mob boss Big Fella (Paul Lukas) orders Pop to kill their colleague, Blackie the bootlegger (Stanley Fields), over a girl. He does, then passes the gun onto Nan; but before she can dump it in the river, she’s caught by the cops, charged, winds up in prison. And where’s the mob? Nowhere.

But just as she gets disillusioned with Dad’s work, Kid is convinced to join up. Oddly, his sharp-shooting ability never comes into play. That feels like a missed opportunity. We see him on the passenger side of a beer truck, urging the driver to ram a blockade, and whooping it up when he does. Then he’s visiting Nan in prison wearing that 1930s gangster staple, a long coat with a fur collar. She’s so happy to see him she doesn’t take in the coat until about a minute later. They argue, kinda. Once again she’s urging him in a direction he doesn’t take, but this time it’s the exact opposite of her first-act direction. Love that.

The third act isn’t as good because it doesn’t follow from what’s happening; it adds to. When Nan gets out, the Big Fella suddenly has a thing for her. It’s out of nowhere. The movie is basically thesis/ antithesis/ 11th-hour addition.

Worried about Kid, Nan tries to take on Big Fella herself, with a little gun in her purse, but he senses the weight and takes it from her. Then he tries to take more from her. She’s only saved because his previous moll, Agnes (Wynne Gibson), who’s been told to scram, can’t bear to lose the Big Fella, doubles back, and shoots him. Now it becomes a kind of Whodunnit, with Kid trying to prove Nan’s innocence to the other gangsters. He doesn’t really, just takes three of them for a ride and leaves them to walk back home in the morning light. Meanwhile, another gang member finds Agnes’ suitcase, meaning Big Fella did tell her to scram, meaning she lied. Meaning she did it.

Morning light
This was Sylvia Sidney’s first starring role—it was supposed to be Clara Bow—and I’m sure she was a revelation. Cooper does his aw-shucks thing to perfection, and the two have great chemistry. I feel like Lukas as Big Fella is miscast—not gangster enough—while Guy Kibbee, usually so reliable at Warner Bros., overacts for this Paramount production: broadly smiling with his eyes so wide they practically pop out of his head. 

Remember when you were young and you’d stay up all night with friends, partying maybe, or just hanging out, maybe expecting something to happen and usually not getting it, and in the morning light everything would just kind of dissolve in weary fashion? That’s kind of what the ending of this movie feels like. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t tie everything together. And maybe that’s nice for a change. It’s just the two stars, in the morning light, safe again, driving back to the city in his 1929 Lincoln, with the POSCL MOTOR CAR RADIO on, as birds take flight.

SLIDESHOW