Angels with Dirty Faces

Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly grew up on the same street. As boys they were caught stealing, Rocky was arrested and Jerry got away; today one is a gangster and the other a priest. When Rocky comes out of prison and returns to the neighbourhood he is a hero to the local boys. Jerry is trying to save the same boys. The film ends in an electric chair and on a question. Michael Curtiz directed. James Cagney plays Rocky and Pat O'Brien plays Father Jerry, with the Dead End Kids as the neighbourhood boys. It opened on 26 November 1938. Cagney built the character's tics on a man he had watched on a Manhattan street corner in his youth: the twitching, the hitching up of the trousers, the repeated catchphrase. The most argued-over moment is the last scene. Is Rocky's collapse on the way to the chair real, or is he faking cowardice so the boys stop idolising him? Cagney said he played it with deliberate ambiguity and left the decision to the audience. The question is still open. During filming Cagney struck the young actor Leo Gorcey during an ad-libbed joke, and the tension between them lasted. It received three Academy Award nominations and grossed 1.7 million dollars. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 100 percent. It entered the National Film Registry in 2024. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Warner gangster pictures and Cagney. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the moral lesson thin. It was made under the Hays Code and states its message plainly.