By Theresa Rodewald.
City for Conquest revitalizes the sports drama formula: losing does not break Danny.”
Danny is a truck driver, a boxer, a brother to Eddie (Arthur Kennedy) and a boyfriend to Peggy (Ann Sheridan). He drives a truck to earn money, to pay the rent and put food on the table because Eddie is a musician and earns no money at all. And Danny boxes because it’s fun, because he’s good at it. He does not do it for glory, however – boxing does not define him.
A Sports Drama Without Ambition (It’s a Compliment!)
A main character who does not really care about winning, whose greatest ambition in life is not focussed on sport but on interpersonal relationships, is highly unusual for a sports drama (and City for Conquest definitely is one). In an interesting gender reversal, Peggy is the film’s most ambitious character. While Danny cares mainly about people, about love and intimacy, Peggy wants to become a professional dancer and she wants to win. She rejects Danny’s proposal to marry her because a career is more important to her. Peggy knows: marriage and its obligatory consequence, a family would be the end of her dancing professionally. She likes Danny, she genuinely cares about him but she loves dancing more. And while the film makes her pay an awful, cruel price for her success, it never criticises her ambition. Almost inadvertently, there is a feminist message here that is quite unusual for its time.
When Danny’s proposal of marriage is rejected, he is disappointed but not angry, takes it with a sad smile instead of vengeful violence. And slowly, reluctantly, Danny turns to boxing instead of romance. He is exceptionally good at it and he makes a lot of money for a lot of people. The dramatic twists comes when one of his opponents wants victory at any price. That fatal boxing match leaves Danny hurt, it turns his life around and on its head.
A Life Worth Living
The end of Danny’s boxing career is tragic and sad and yet… it’s mostly the people around Danny who seem to think so. Danny himself is fine with his new life. This is another way in which City for Conquest revitalizes the sports drama formula: losing does not break Danny. We seldomly see this kind of strength in film, especially when it comes to male characters. Danny’s strength is not (primarily) physical, intellectual or classically heroic – it is emotional. Danny is resilient, his source of happiness is quite simply being in this world, being part of it by talking to people, listening to his brother’s piano playing, listening to the sounds of New York City. This quiet rejection of outward success echoes contemporary critiques of capitalism and of ableism – living on your own terms is enough, no matter the social norms and assumptions that pretend know what a life worth living looks like.
The same goes for conventions of romance: do Danny and Peggy get back together in the end? Maybe, maybe not. I prefer to think they don’t – simply because they don’t have to. They share a bond, an intimate understanding of each other and a love that does not need to be expressed romantically.
City for Conquest is radical because of its softness, its emphasis on interpersonal relationships and its core message: there are more important things in life, other sources of joy than winning.
City for Conquest is radical because of its softness, its emphasis on interpersonal relationships and its core message….”
Tough Guys With Broken Hearts
James Cagney is best-known for playing tough guys in classic gangster films such as The Roaring Twenties (1939) or Public Enemy. Even though Danny in City for Conquest could be (mis-)read as a tough guy – a boxer, a truck driver – Cagney’s performance is one of tough vulnerability. The tightly-coiled energy that is so typical for Cagney is still there – it runs like a current under his skin and is is unleashed in film’s major boxing match. Still, the rough edges of Danny’s character, of Cagney’s face even, are all softened. Cagney’s performance is very open, very natural and therefore very moving. Dialogue that might otherwise be a bit too much, a bit too schmalzy comes across as raw, honest and beautiful. This vulnerable streak of Cagney performances runs through his early career. It can be found in a film like The Roaring Twenties where his character Eddie is definitely angry, violent and never knows when to stop. And yet, there is also a lot of quiet and helpless sadness to him once he finally understands that his love for Jean (Priscilla Lane) is unrequited. The Roaring Twenties is both, a gangster film and tragic love triangle. Eddie is someone in over his head, not a bad guy, not a tough guy – just someone who tries to get by and ultimately fails.
A Word on the Director
Ukrainian-born American film director Anatole Litvak made films in Russia and Germany before emigrating first to France and later to Hollywood. Today, Litvak might not be as well know as fellow émigré filmmakers Billy Wilder or Fritz Lang but his films are always interesting and often mind-blowing to watch. It is as though he dissects the filmmaking conventions of Hollywood’s Golden Age and reassembles them to his liking. He paints a flawed but empathetic picture of mental illness in The Snake Pit (1948) and tackles war trauma in The Long Night (1947) – the performances of actors such as Olivia de Havilland or Henry Fonda are often different (perhaps more nuanced) than their performances in other contemporary Studio productions. Litvak might be a director whose films are not stone-cold classics but they are always worth watching, always worth seeking out.
City for Conquest screened at this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato.
Theresa Rodewald, MA, studied Cinema Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden and Cultural Studies in Germany and Ireland. She writes for a number of independent film magazines, including L-MAG and Berliner Filmfestivals, and has written about critiques of capitalism in current gangster films, images of masculinity in Scarface (1932) and the representation of queer women in mainstream cinema. She is a contributor to David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press).