[7] Ruth Chatterton is our title character, a bootlegging madam in 1906 San Francisco. The big earthquake claims the lives of her father and fiancée, and she ends up giving birth in a Chinatown basement. When poverty gives her no option, she gives up her baby for adoption. She straightens up and returns years later to reclaim him, only to find he no longer remembers …
[6] Director William Wellman (Wings, Battleground) opens Safe in Hell with the title in flames, and I interpret that to mean, “Buckle up for melodrama.” Dorothy Mackaill stars as a woman who hits hard times in New Orleans while her husband is at war. She turns to prostitution to make ends meet, but early in the film a john gets rough with her and she’s …
[7] James Cagney makes his breakthrough performance as a Chicago street kid who becomes a successful gangster during prohibition. I don’t usually like gangster movies, but director William Wellman (Wings, The Ox-Bow Incident) frames The Public Enemy as a cautionary tale with a moral ending — it doesn’t glamorize the lifestyle like so many more modern movies do. And while I may not relate with …
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