City for Conquest

Anatole Litvak: City for Conquest (US 1940). Donald Crisp (Scotty MacPherson), James Cagney (Danny Kenny).

La città del peccato / Suurkaupungin varjot / Storstadens skuggor / Mannen med järnnävarna.

    US 1940. Prod.: Anatole Litvak per Warner Bros. Pictures. 

    Director: Anatole Litvak. Sog.: da romanzo omonimo (1936) di Aben Kandel. Scen.: John Wexley. F.: James Wong Howe, Sol Polito. M.: William Holmes. Scgf.: Robert Haas. Mus.: Max Steiner. Int.: James Cagney (Danny Kenny), Ann Sheridan (Peggy Nash), Arthur Kennedy (Eddie Kenny), Frank Craven (l’anziano), Donald Crisp (Scotty MacPherson), Frank McHugh (Mutt), George Tobias (Pinky), Elia Kazan (Googi), Anthony Quinn (Murray Burns). 35 mm. 106’. Bn.

    Helsinki premiere 23 Nov 1941 Metropolis, Elysee - distributed by Warner Bros. Finland

    35 mm print from Warner Bros. Pictures

    Concession by Park Circus

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Journeys Into Night: The World of Anatole Litvak

    Viewed at Cinema Modernissimo with e-subtitles in Italian, 27 June 2024

Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna Catalogue 2024): " A captivating and tragic symphony of New York, this precursor of Raging Bull tells the story of two brothers, one a boxer, the other a musician rising from the slums of the city. The elder, James Cagney’s Danny Kenny, is a prize-fighter who eventually loses both his girl (Ann Sheridan) and his eyesight."

"Only when his vision is gone, does he begin to see his place in the world and opens – perhaps in an allegorical move – a newsstand. It is from his modest kiosk that he listens to his kid brother’s triumphant debut classical concert. The idol of Madison Square Garden falls so the new god of Carnegie Hall can rise."

"Litvak’s nods to sophistication didn’t sit too well with Cagney who wanted Raoul Walsh to direct, and more rawness and action. Litvak’s re-examination of Cagney’s popular persona – similar to what he achieved with Edward G. Robinson in The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse – irked Cagney, as did his unfamiliar, camera-oriented style."

"Yet, it is not hard to see how much Litvak has toned down and sometimes even repressed his signature methods in favour of Warner’s fast-paced, editing-based house style. But who else could give Cagney the scene at the end when, in his blurred vision, the image of Ann Sheridan comes into full focus? It is one Litvak’s most lyrical moments and one of Cagney’s most moving."

"The actors are all brilliant, especially in smaller roles. Arthur Kennedy (as Cagney’s brother) and Elia Kazan in their first acting roles found the experience rewarding. Kazan, being personally handpicked by Litvak and appearing in two of his films (the other, Blues in the Night), soon developed a desire to make films."

"And isn’t Kazan’s On the Waterfront about an ex-boxer’s costly fight for social status with tales of betrayal, success and failure running in parallel something right out of Litvak’s world where one brother’s downfall becomes the grit and drama of the other brother’s art? " Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna Catalogue 2024)

AA: After Anatole Litvak's international breakthrough Mayerling (FR 1936), Warner Bros. became his home studio until the US joined the Second World War. At WB, Litvak started with transitional films set in France and continued with vehicles for Warner Bros.'s biggest stars Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Edward G. Robinson and John Garfield.

James Cagney and Ann Sheridan were the stars in City for Conquest, and Litvak achieved something unusual with both. In Litvak's direction, Cagney expanded his range. Sheridan was having the most decisive transition of her career. Having had enough of her "oomph girl" status she excelled in crime dramas such as Angels with Dirty Faces, They Made Me a Criminal and They Drive by Night. Litvak directed her sensitively in a role with agency.

As a Warner Bros. director, Litvak absorbed and modified its signature "New Deal in Entertainment" approach, to quote the title of Nick Roddick's classic book. Soon Litvak made a major contribution to the studio profile by directing the first Hollywood mainstream anti-Nazi movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy. The Warner Bros. style was popular, democratic, underdog violent, rebellious, pugnacious, on the level and no-nonsense, and Litvak had to struggle to respond with his contrarian instincts of European sophistication, smooth montages and fluid camera movements which he had honed in tandem with Max Ophuls in Nie wieder Liebe.

With City for Conquest one could launch Warner Bros. seminars. Opened: by signature montages. Stars: excellent. Genre: not one but many. We are reminded of Steven Neale's insight: the greatest popular films aspire to the condition of the genre mix. The mix here covers the boxing, the musical and the gangster genres. The goal: the American Dream of success. The trajectory: taking chances. All three protagonists start from the bottom, the boxer (Cagney), the dancer (Sheridan) and the composer (Arthur Kennedy). The boxer and the dancer first succeed, then fail. But they never lose their fighting spirit or their power of love.

The boxer Danny Kenny (Cagney) has never stopped encouraging his composer brother Eddie in his most ambitious, groundbreaking composition-in-progress. We follow it through the picture which ends in the victorious premiere of this composition, "Magic Isle Symphony", a parallel and a homage to George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". "Magic Isle Symphony" was composed for City for Conquest by Max Steiner.

City for Conquest is anti-noir. In the fatal boxing match, Danny's adversary Cannonball Wales (Joe Gray) smears his gloves with rosin as advised by his crooked manager Dutch (Jerome Cowan). Danny not only loses the match but his eyesight permanently. In the parallel story, Peggy is abused and even raped by her manager Murray Burns (Anthony Quinn). Their friend Googi Zucco (Elia Kazan) turns into a gangster who meets a bloody end. These blows do not lead into a vision of desolation and brutalization but a perspective of hope and growth even in the face of extreme disappointment and injustice. This is still about "souls made great by love and adversity" like in the world of Frank Borzage.

A brilliant 35 mm print from Warner Bros.