1931: smart Money (91st)

What else happened this year? To my mind this is all Great Depression stuff, and also in fact, that seems true.

What is the plot - in one sentence? We follow a barber (Edward G. Robinson) who is good at gambling, as he rides his luck to becoming a crime boss.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? He’s got a fondness for women, and one of them betrays him, leading to his arrest, coupled with the accidental murder of his best mate (James Cagney) means, well, he’ll be cutting hair in prison if he’s lucky. He bets reporters that he'll be out of prison before too long, before boarding a...prison train, they don't exist anymore, right?

What is the meaning of the title? It’s called ‘Smart Money,’ and he does seem to have a preternatural amount of luck, especially in games of chance – something which I don’t think it’s possible to have in real life or benefit from.

Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney sharing a breakfast in dressing gowns and shooing away a servant so that they can bicker like an old married couple.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? A woman does get slapped when she’s found to be betraying the gang (she’s on a very obscure case of blackmail. This is after they stopped her from drowning, so come on.

In an… enlightened manner for the time, James Cagney is slapped twice by a couple of women too. 

Robinson also calls some of the black ‘servants’ things like ‘suntan,’ but It’s too late to do anything about that. 

Oh, and Boris Karloff is there, in a fedora, threatening horrible things to a pretty woman if she won't pay him back. He looks weird in contemporary clothing. 

Any thoughts? The cities in the movie are shown as ‘Iron Town’ and ‘The City’ for no real reason.

Like a lot of movies from this era, the main romance in the movie is between the two main male characters. Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney (their only shared movie) share the most love in this movie. Even if Edward G manages to have some ‘attractive for the time’ woman on his arm most of the time, we know where his heart really lies. The final fight, after this, where he kills his friend accidentally, has all the cinematic beats of a breakup.

Can you be skilled at unskilled games? He seems to be. For example, he flips a coin to win for money, and wins most of the time. I don’t think that can happen for an extended period of time. He also gets robbed by a rigged card game, then goes back again to show them who’s boss, and beat them on the level – but it's a game of chance, right?

Would you recommend this? Yeah, I liked it. I have a lot of time for pithy, zippy movies from the 1930s, and this one has passed the test of time pretty well, even if there’s not quite enough characterisation to really deliver – Edward G. and Jimmy Cagney only have a few scenes together, for example, and the ‘great rise’ as a gambler / casino owner happened VERY quickly.

Final thoughts? There have been a lot of links to other movies during this feature, which makes sense. However, it is very easy to see Robinson’s character here as the younger version of his successful gambler in ‘The Cincinatti Kid’,

Meanwhile, the little midget who has appeared in at least a few movies now, but most notably was killed at the end of The Unknown, appeared for a second to have his back rubbed by Edward G. I hope he got paid ok in his career. 

 

Speaking of paid, you can see the other movies in this feature, for FREE, when you click right here.