Synopsis
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) is a Warner Bros. crime drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring James Cagney opposite Pat O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart. Two kids from the same rough neighbourhood, one wrong turn, and two completely different lives.
Rocky Sullivan grows up to run the streets as a feared gangster; Jerry Connelly takes the cloth and comes back to that same neighbourhood to keep local boys out of exactly the life Rocky chose. When Rocky gets out of prison and returns, those boys see a hero. Jerry sees a problem. Bogart plays the crooked lawyer who has been holding Rocky's money — and has no intention of handing it over.
Released in 1938, the film landed Cagney an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it is easy to see why: his Rocky is charming and genuinely menacing in the same breath. Curtiz builds the whole thing toward a finale that refuses the easy moral exit. For anyone tracing the roots of American crime cinema, this is where a lot of it starts. Stream Angels with Dirty Faces online on iFILM.
Starring
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