Directed by Michael Curtiz
Screenplay by John Wexley, Warren Duff, Rowland Brown
Director of photography: Sol Polito
Music by Max Steiner
Cast: James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, George Bancroft, Billy Halop
Production: Warner Brothers 

Two young men are being chased along railway tracks. They hide in a railcar, but are found here too. In their attempt to flee from the police, one of them almost falls under thetrain, but his friend rescues, which slows both of them down. One of them gets caught and ends up in juvenile prison, while the one who got away becomes a priest. This is how Michael Curtiz’s film begins. It continues in a city that is obviously a film studio set, with huge speakers from a car first blasting out Dixieland music, which then shifts to church hymns. The line between the worlds of gangsters and priests blurs. As Angels with Dirty Faces is a moralizing gangster film from the 1930s, what makes it memorable arethe moral issues it raises, rather than the violence and Humphrey Bogart’s character. Such issues are: can we continue to sympathize with James Cagney’s gangster character? Is it right for him to become a hero? Can he become a rolemodel for young people? James Cagney was the number one star of gangster movies. Orson Welles described him as “the greatest actor ever to appear on camera”. What renders the ethical dilemmas truly compelling is his character and not the “Dead End Kids” group that appear in many similar films. Between 1937and 1939, these teenaged boys played in seven movies. In the better ones, they generally played street kids who were in danger of becoming gangsters but always ended up on the good side.