Each Dawn I Die (1939)

Oh look, James Cagney in prison. Sound familiar? Well, despite what you'd expect, he's innocent of the major charges this time. The setup reminds me pretty strongly of Alfred Hitchcock. No wonder I put it on my queue.

Frank Ross (Cagney) is a muckraker who hits a nerve when investigating a candidate for governor (Victor Jory, state unstated). Soon he gets framed for a lethal DUI and has inadequate legal counsel. In prison, he makes an unlikely ally of infamous lifer "Hood" Stacey (George Raft). After Ross passes up an opportunity to rat on Stacey, the latter makes a tempting offer: do rat on him and thus give him the chance to escape from the courtroom with some outside help; in return, Stacey would use his connections to track down Ross's framers.

Of course, a man who has previously dedicated his career to fighting crime and corruption won't just leap at the deal. But the longer Ross's co-workers try in vain to overturn his sentence, the less faith he has in the justice system. Soon (from our perspective, as the film squeezes months if not years into 92 minutes) Cagney is talking a lot like he does in his typical gangster roles, altho phrases like "dirty rat" stem more from other characters. It gets a little disconcerting when he can no longer claim full innocence under the law, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

I'd seen Raft in a few other pictures but didn't remember him. Even his top billing in They Drive by Night didn't secure him in my mind. Now I should be able. He does a passable job channeling a Humphrey Bogart-type mug.

Many other actors put a sincere effort into becoming memorable characters themselves. Jane Bryan plays Ross's co-worker and love interest, who arguably does more than anyone else to free him. John Wray serves as the hardest screw, who ought to have taken the warden's admonition to heart. Several cons are colorful enough in their own right, tho I hardly bother to keep track of them, for the same reason I hardly bother to keep track of soldiers in war flicks.

Yeah, I should mention the extraordinary body count for a prison setting. I wouldn't have guessed from the beginning that things would reach a crescendo to make White Heat blush. This was the Hays Code era, but we still see some blood and pretty bothersome fatality indications.

Contemporaries counted EDID among the numerous greats of 1939. So do I. It may have predictable elements that simultaneously call for suspension of disbelief, but it is taut. And not quite like what I've seen before.