cult film freak: JAMES CAGNEY & JOAN BLONDELL HIDE OUT IN 'HE WAS HER MAN'

Lobby Card for HE WAS HER MAN Year: 1934

James Cagney dime-novel-style programmer has his character Flicker Hayes, newly released from prison, dangerously double-crossing the hoods who'd double-crossed him as two more goons plan to keep on his trail...

Beginning in San Fransisco where he meets Joan Blondell, as a prostitute setting her mind on marrying a simple fisherman in a John Steinbeck Monterrey style seaside town. She has a seemingly benign passenger in Cagney's Hayes, both hiding out in completely different ways. Cagney's surprisingly soft-spoken here, but not nearly as much as dutiful Victor Jory as the fisherman who doesn't care about Blondell's past. This is merely a distraction to Cagney's story that, in itself, distracts from what the movie's leading to — with armed goons on the way, it doesn't look likely he'll survive...

HE WAS HER MAN Rating: ***1/2

Veteran (even at that time) character-actor Frank Craven fits nicely into the mellow rural proto-Noir — in CITY OF CONQUEST he was a narrating roman chorus bum and here he's a con man "rat" with a trick up his sleeve, ultimately at Cagney's expense: our previously selfish crook is headed toward a crossroad since Blondell loves him madly...

The fishing village connected to the passage seaward is like a dream milieu to the first early Cagney programmer that's more a crime-related, dime-novel inspired fable than his usual rambling con-man connected heist thriller. What it lacks in the usual edgy excitement or spontaneously sarcastic humor is made up for within the creative storyline in this page-turning melodrama with a more poetic than satisfying, noir-esque conclusion.