(1931)
3
Bruce Eder
Blonde Crazy is a testament to three great talents -- James Cagney, whose boundless kinetic energy (and quietly athletic presence) and charisma fairly leap off the screen, not only with his every move but whenever he opens his mouth; Joan Blondell, whose gorgeously expressive eyes top out a screen figure that audiences loved to love; and director Roy Del Ruth, who harnessed both successfully in this fast-paced, punchy comedy/drama, which never slows down long enough for audiences to ponder precisely how amoral virtually everyone at the center of this plot (most of all the seemingly "respectable" characters represented by Ray Milland) is. Indeed, the movie has a peculiar morality about it, in that most of the people who get seriously scammed, of course, deserve it and walk right into what happens to them, against their professed morality and best instincts; and the scammers (with the notable exception of Louis Calhern's well-dressed con man) have a surprising degree of loyalty and honor (and honesty) when it comes to dealing with each other. The director pulls all of those threads from John Bright and Kubec Glasmon's screenplay together, and juggles suspense and comedy so successfully that audiences get surprised by more than one double-cross and triple-cross in the action (including a couple aimed directly at them), all of which keep this film moving like a mesmerizing juggling act, laced with a poignant romance at its center between two people who don't realize for most of the movie just how much they care about each other. It was movies such as Blonde Crazy, as much as overtly risque fare such as Babyface, that helped to drive censors to distraction in the early 1930s, and demonstrated precisely how potent a medium film was -- audiences scarcely had time to ponder the morality of what they were watching when director like Del Ruth and actors like Cagney and Blondell were working well together.
cast-crew for Blonde Crazy on AllMovie
Blonde Crazy (1931)
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