KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE (Paramount, 1950) D: Gordon Douglas, w/ James Cagney, Barbara Payton. Rating: NNN Blu-ray package: none Rating: NNN
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye isn’t the greatest James Cagney gangster flick (that would be Public Enemy, The Roaring Twenties or White Heat), but it’s a solid noir thriller propelled by one of Cagney’s always-strong performances as a thoroughly bad man.
Ralph Cotter (Cagney), breaks out of jail, killing a fellow con along the way, hooks up with the dead con’s grieving sister (Barbara Payton), puts together a little gang and robs a grocery store, but gets shaken down by a pair of crooked cops. He finds a corrupt lawyer (Luther Adler, in a performance equal to Cagney’s), turns the tables on the cops and gets set to take over the town. At the same time, he’s romancing a rich man’s daughter.
Cotter is violent, unpredictable, smart, daring, ambitious and a self-centred social chameleon. Everyone thinks he’s crazy. Today, we’d call him a sociopath. Either way, he’s a fine vehicle for Cagney’s dynamic physicality and nuanced expressiveness.
In the absence of extras, check out some of Cagney’s other titles. He is one of the finest actors the screen has yet produced.
EXTRAS B&w. English audio. No subtitles.
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