Each Dawn I Die. William Keighley. 1939.
Cagney!
And he’s not a crook!? Is that even legal!?
OK, but he’s sentence anyway. *phew*
(I didn’t know it’s a sci-fi movie — he’s sentenced for drunken driving (and killing some other people while driving (it’s a frame!)), and as we all know, that just doesn’t happen in the US. Killing somebody (if you’re driving a car) is more like a youthful lark kind of thing in the US court system, I think.)
This is great! It’s so noir it’s leaking ink.
He said it! He said the line!
I love this movie.
Man, the casting here is great. It’s got like … a dozen? great guys totally basking in their roles as tough/not-so-tough hoodlums in jail. It’s so much fun to watch.
The bit that feels false is the bit with the warden: He’s tsk tsks the beating of prisoners, but he puts them into “The Hole” (where they’re chained in an awkward position, in darkness, all day) — he’s a total monster. But he’s also this avuncular figure. Like… somehow that makes the torture better? It just makes it more gruesome.
Fan. tastic.
This blog post is part of the 1939
series.