"Strawberry Blonde" has tremendous energy. It's a love letter to fin-de - siecle America, here a feisty, urban "melting pot" of the burgeoning middle-classes. This is a Horatio Alger America, a place rife with go- getters and plenty of opportunity, where immigrants from different nations (Irish and Greek) strive arm in arm. James Cagney, Olivia DeHavilland and Rita Hayworth give delicious, youthful performances in "Strawberry Blonde". Perhaps a bit too old for their respective roles, the actors nevertheless conjure the bold charm of a younger America. An avaricious coquette, an ambitious scrapper and a sensitive would-be suffragette, these are characters with big, bright expectations. And they are perfectly suited to the lively, bustling world director Raoul Walsh presents here.
Walsh gives us a kind of turn-of-the-century paradise, a world of graceful hats and high necked-dresses, foamy beer and bright brass bands, horse drawn carriages, friendly policemen and dinner at Tony Pastor's. It's a world that's clean and optimistic, but not yet fully tame.
Cagney's Biff Grimes has a temper. At the merest wisp of provocation, he puts up his dukes. But his fisticuffs don't count as brutality here, instead they are rough play, a manifestation of energy and virility and will. "Strawberry Blonde" may venerate traditional values, but it also celebrates desire and appetite and possibility. It's an appealing vision. And probably a perfect inspirational vehicle for its original WWII audiences. "Strawberry Blonde" works as both a paean to a spirited, self-sacrificing working class AND a promise of satisfactions to come.
Walsh gives us a kind of turn-of-the-century paradise, a world of graceful hats and high necked-dresses, foamy beer and bright brass bands, horse drawn carriages, friendly policemen and dinner at Tony Pastor's. It's a world that's clean and optimistic, but not yet fully tame.
Cagney's Biff Grimes has a temper. At the merest wisp of provocation, he puts up his dukes. But his fisticuffs don't count as brutality here, instead they are rough play, a manifestation of energy and virility and will. "Strawberry Blonde" may venerate traditional values, but it also celebrates desire and appetite and possibility. It's an appealing vision. And probably a perfect inspirational vehicle for its original WWII audiences. "Strawberry Blonde" works as both a paean to a spirited, self-sacrificing working class AND a promise of satisfactions to come.