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Am I Missing Something?

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Quite short even for the time period at 60 minutes, this film is notable only for being James Cagney's film debut, and for being the first of seven that paired him with Joan Blondell. The film titillates us early on with pre-Code naughtiness; for example, a penny arcade game, "Hit The Bull, Up She Goes", which has a woman seated next to a bulls-eye that, when hit with a ball, causes her to flip 90 degrees upwards and reveal her legs. Another is seeing a bathing outfit on leggy Evalyn Knapp that would fit right in in 2016. Unfortunately, the story is pretty simple and the film is marred by poor acting, most notably by lead Grant Withers, who's hard to watch. Even Cagney is uncharacteristically off in his performance. The only exception is Blondell, 24 years old and in her second film role, appearing as a tough-talking brunette, who steals every scene she's in.

Save for the debut of James Cagney and Joan Blondell Sinner's Holiday is a rather lifeless early sound experiment of urban lingo spoken from the side of most of the cast's mouth. Chuck full of cynicism and greed with a murder and sappy romance thrown in for good measure it flounders from the outset.Ma Delano runs a penny arcade on the midway with her three kids. Two contribute but youngest Harry (Cagney) would rather work where the big money is with bootlegger Mitch McKane. After McKane fires his barker Angel Harrigan (Grant Withers) Ma takes him on. When Mc Kane ends up dead Harrigan becomes the prime suspect.Sinner's Holiday is filled with hard boiled eggs but most are rotten. It's endless tough talk and little else as director John Adolfi, probably ham strung by the microphone does little to bring any verve or suspense to his scenes. The mercurial Cagney and sassy Blondell bring some life to their limited roles but Withers sarcastic lead looks bored most of the time and Evelyn Knapp as his love interest about as engrossed as he. Holiday is no way to enjoy one.

Wow - James Cagney's first film role and he pulls it off like a veteran! Though he's third billed behind Grant Withers and Evalyn Knapp, it's hard to argue that this isn't Cagney's vehicle all the way, demonstrating a commanding and comfortable presence on the big screen, even though he does go 'over the top' a couple of times. Still, I was impressed with his debut performance, and the story itself was entertaining enough to maintain one's interest for it's dead on one hour run time.The setting is a Coney Island amusement park, but that's just a front for Mitch McKane's (Warren Hymer) booze peddling racket. Cagney's character Harry Delano is one of his underlings and is being groomed to run the operation in case Mitch gets pinched. Instead, Harry guns Mitch down in a shoot first or die situation when confronted over his skimming the operation. Things get further complicated when Harry's sister Jennie (Knapp) witnesses the incident, and Ma Delano (Lucille La Verne) tries to pin it on Jennie's fiancée, giving future mothers-in-law a bad name ever since.Joan Blondell is initially referred to in the story as the 'little happiness girl', presumably for her youthful good looks and an insinuation that she sells kisses at the carnival. Ma's description of Myrtle is a bit more colorful, to her she's a 'gutter floozie' for hooking up with her son. In fact if not for Cagney, this might have been Ma Delano's story for the way she takes over every scene she's in. No political correctness for Ma, when she sends someone out to look for Harry, she suggests they 'try the chink's'.For Cagney and Blondell, this would be their first of seven screen appearances together, all of which were filmed between 1930 and 1934. Cagney would get involved with running booze again in his 1939 team up with Humphrey Bogart for "The Roaring Twenties". Here though, the young James Cagney gives a fine performance in his very first outing, with just the right combination of malice and charm that would make him one of movie history's top gangsters.

In 1929, James Cagney and Joan Blondell (neither of them well-known at the time) played supporting roles in a Broadway drama called "Penny Arcade". Warner Brothers bought the film rights and brought Cagney and Blondell to Hollywood to repeat their stage roles in the screen version, retitled "Sinner's Holiday". This was the first movie for both of them. (Blondell's second film, a quickie, was released before "Sinner's Holiday", a more prestigious picture.) The actual star of this film is Grant Withers, playing a gangster who's made a lot of enemies and needs a place to hide before he gets rubbed out. Withers is pretty good, and he deserves to be better known. Cagney's role is much smaller, but he's absolutely electrifying. As soon as he steps on screen, there's no question that he's the best actor in this movie ... one of the best actors in the history of films, in fact.Joan Blondell is boring in this film, as usual. Her appeal has always eluded me. At least in her other films she usually had something to do; here, she doesn't. There are good performances by Lucille LaVerne and Warren Hymer, in his usual typecast role as a dim gangster. Hank Mann, who was one of the original Keystone Cops (and who eventually outlived all the other Keystone Cops), is excellent here in a small role."Sinner's Holiday" suffers from the usual Warner Brothers complaint: low budget-itis. I saw the trailer for this film before I saw the movie itself. The trailer features a shot of amusement park rides in a funfair. This is obviously stock footage, but at least I expected the stock shot to turn up in the movie itself. Surprisingly, it doesn't. There's almost nothing on screen to convince you that this movie takes place in an amusement park. It looks like a stage play recorded on film, rather than a movie in its own right. Still, "Sinner's Holiday" has much to recommend it, and Cagney's performance alone is worth your time. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10 points, or 7 if you're a Cagney fan. If you're a Joan Blondell fan, I don't want to know about it.