cult film freak: JAMES CAGNEY WITH ANN SHERIDAN IN 'CITY FOR CONQUEST'

James Cagney and Ann Sheridan in CITY FOR CONQUEST Year: 1940 Rates: ***1/2

James Cagney, as a talented yet reluctant boxer, in one scene... after winning an easy bout... when asked by a potential manager if he wants to continue fighting... he answers by motioning to an old guy, bumming around a locker: after which the camera deliberately pans forward as the punchy, brain-damaged has-been begins singing off-key — right on cue...

Making CITY FOR CONQUEST more of a deliberate slow-burn presentation depicting big city souls than the fast-moving types from the previous years' epic THE ROARING TWENTIES: a kind of majestic art film that, coming out in 1940, is more a peak to 1930's Cagney cinema than a beginning of the 1940's...

James Cagney in CITY FOR CONQUEST

And the characters are regular people: like younger brother Arthur Kennedy, with the skills of a concert pianist stuck in a grungy apartment while ingenue Ann Sheridan... having all grown up together in a childhood backstory... partners with slimy professional dancer Anthony Quinn, to the chagrin of Cagney's Danny Kenny, who boxes only when he needs just-enough money for family and friends, and he hardly has an attitude...

No matter what the obstacle, and even inside the ring, Cagney's not his usual edgy firebrand yet he's not idealistic either: a subdued, passive performance, mostly allowing the surrounding melodrama (narrated by an endearing bum providing roman chorus exposition also featuring affable sidekick Frank McHugh and fast-talking climber Elia Kazan) to occur in its own mellow pace — so while Cagney's characters usually devour life, here it's the other way around.