Starring: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Frank Albertson, Marguerite Churchill, William Harrigan, Lee Tracy, Warren Hymer, Ilka Chase, Ferike Boros, Paul Porcasi, Joe Brown, Ben Bard, Pat Somerset, Eddie Gribbon, Mike Donlin, Paul Page
Writer: Dudley Nicholas (based on the novel "Louis Berretti" by Donald Henderson Clarke
Cinematography: George Schneiderman
Editor: Frank E Hull
B&W, 1h 22m. 1.20:1 ratio.
Released on: May 11, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation
My experience: Ford at Fox DVD box set
What a difference a year makes. On May 8, 1929, John Ford's film The Black Watch was released, and while an entertaining film, the dialogue registers today as very stilted and slow. Why? Sound film was in its infancy, and studios were trying to figure out how listening to dialogue would affect an audience. It was thought that actors needed to enunciate slowly and clearly, and often loudly -- playing to the back row, in theatre parlance -- in order for moviegoers to accept talking pictures. What filmmakers hadn't counted on was the fact that when the faces were looming large on the screen above, audiences had no problem telling the emotions of characters.
A year later, on May 11, 1930, Born Reckless, also directed by Ford, was released into a world that, like the film industry, was very much in tumult. America and the world had been plummeted into what would become known as the Great Depression, which would last the better part of ten years. Hollywood was forging ahead with its new experiments in sound film, and even two-strip Technicolor. All this is to say, that Born Reckless must have been seen as a new breed of cinema to those curious early 1930 cinema audiences.
The interesting thing for me is that Born Reckless was released in 1930, a year before Little Caesar and The Public Enemy -- which are universally acknowledged to have kicked off the gangster film -- came out. It is the type of film that seems like it could have been written for James Cagney. The dialogue is quick and snappy, and full of early 20th century slang. The pace slows after that, but as in a Baz Luhrmann film, the energy of the first quarter of the film for the most part carries us through the slower parts.
Our protagonist is Luigi "Louis" Berretti (Edmund Lowe), a hoodlum in New York in the late 1910s, just before America entered the war. He lives at home with his mother (Ferike Boros) and father (Paul Porcasi, an Italian-born actor whose use of the Sicilian dialect is used to comedic effect that probably would have gone over the heads of at least three quarters of US audiences back then), and his sister Rosa (Marguerite Churchill). He and his gang, including Big Shot (Warren Hymer), Good News Brophy (William Harrigan), Joe Bergman (Ben Bard), Duke (Pat Somerset), and Bugs (Eddie Gribbon), get in trouble for trying to rob a bank, and are called before District Attorney Cardigan (Roy Stewart). With the help of local reporter Bill O'Brien (Lee Tracy), Louis is able to swing a deal to get sent overseas and serve in the army.
While in training camp he meets Frank Sheldon (Frank Albertson), a rich young man whose uncle Jim (Edwards Davis) and sister Joan (Catherine Dale Owen) are able to visit before they go overseas. Ward Bond and Jack Pennick appear as scowling sergeants here. When they do get overseas, the movie gets very Fordian, as the director spends about fifteen minutes indulging in raucous masculine hijinks, including Louis' flirtation with a French waitress (Yola d'Avril). Upon returning home, sans a few comrades thanks to the unseen Battle of the Argonne, he reconnects with his family, folks from his old neighborhood, and gives his respects to Joan, who is set to marry Dick Milburn (an uncredited Randolph Scott). He starts a nightclub which soon becomes the hottest spot in town, but being in the same place, his past is never far behind him. Can he keep his nose clean?
While Lowe is good in the role, Cagney would have been dynamite. Lowe has charisma for sure, and nails the physical part of the role (could it be Cagney stole some of his Cagney-isms from Edmund Dantes Lowe?). Like the Count of Monte Cristo he was named for, Lowe is just a little too well put-together and soft-spoken not to mention being a bigger, more lumbering person than the five foot five Cagney, whose movements were informed by both his scrappy childhood growing up in the Bowery and his training as a professional dancer. It's unfair of me to compare Lowe to James Cagney, I know ... but one can't help but wonder what the Warner Bros. star would have done with such a role. Warren Hymer is great as Big Shot, bringing a likeability to what is essentially a villainous role. I was impressed by Marguerite Churchill, who brings a nice intensity to the role of Rosa, Louis' sister. And Lee Tracy was just fine as the fast-talking, wisecracking reporter Bill O'Brien.
The film itself gives a fine representation of a New York neighborhood, and very much captures the vibe of the period (in fact, one might say that the pre-World War I scenes are a little too modern from a historical point of view, but that was the norm in Hollywood at that time). The backlot set is very much like that which would be seen in countless gangster films over the next decade or so, from The Public Enemy all the way through to 1939's The Roaring Twenties (my personal favourite gangster film of the era). The scenes overseas in France run a little too long, however. They don't add character, as we already know who these people are; the film would be little over an hour without these scenes, though, so perhaps they were added to prop up the runtime?
Regardless, when we return to America after the wartime interlude, the pace of the film quickens. In a series of episodes we see a decade pass over the course of perhaps ten minutes. The climax of the film involves the kidnapping of a child of the well-to-do, and I had assumed it was a take on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, but upon researching it later I realized that the Lindbergh kidnapping didn't happen until 1932, two years later. Ford, who while indulging his buffoonish tendencies during the sequences in France, has heretofore kept his cinematic prowess fairly restrained, lets out the stopper during the last reel of the film. Louis' approach of the criminal compound on Long Island is blanketed with some great smoke machine work, which gives the film something of a film noirish tinge about fifteen years before the term was coined. This mood continues when, upon returning to his nightclub for a showdown with Big Shot, the swinging doors are suddenly covered with his profile in shadow, seconds before he enters the frame. There is also a shockingly abrupt dolly pullback between those same swinging doors after shots are fired, which serves the dual purpose of enhancing the shock caused by the loud gunshots and put the viewer on edge, while at the same time quickly pulling away from any actual violence being shown on film. While the Hays Code wouldn't go into effect for another four years, censorship was still very much a thing in 1930, albeit left in the hands of government censors of the states and provinces. The movement also makes us crane our necks in anticipation of who exactly won the duel.
Born Reckless is not a perfect film, but it is a surprisingly good early gangster film. There had been others in the past (Fritz Lang's epic four and a half hour saga, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, Von Sternberg's 1927 masterpiece Underworld) and would be countless more going forward, but in terms of sound films out of Hollywood, I was surprised, pleasantly so, to discover that this early prototype of a soon to be ubiquitous genre can still very much hold its own.
Seven and a half generous gangsters out of ten.
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