Antonius Block Fans of auto racing should like this one. There is lots of footage of old racing showing various crash scenes, drivers careening around tracks in cars without roofs (going through clouds of dirt!), and occasional fires on the track. Billy Arnold, Fred Frame, and many other real race drivers appear in the film, and there are scenes from Indianapolis, which had been racing the 500 since 1911.There is also a love story, though this is a Cagney-Blondell film in which the two are adversaries. Cagney is a race car driver who doesn't want to marry his girlfriend with benefits (Ann Dvorak), Blondell's friend, taking her for granted. He has a younger brother (Eric Linden) who also wants to race cars, and he hypocritically wants to protect him from booze and "loose women" like Dvorak and Blondell. Things get complicated when his brother falls for Blondell, and tragic when he causes the death of a fellow driver.This is not great cinema or anything, but it does have Cagney/Blondell, and an interesting story line, and it's unique with all of the vintage auto racing.

audiemurph Here is a movie with a split personality; any scene with James Cagney in it is captivating: Cagney plays a generally unlikable race-car driver with his usual brand of fanatical intensity, and the wonderful tics that make Cagney Cagney: physically and psychologically manhandling the men and women around him, adjusting his tie and jacket with a formal roll of his shoulders, spitting out lines like a machine gun. Wonderful stuff! But when he is off screen, you may or may not care that much. The pace is fast, with classic Warner Brothers 1930's dialogue, but... Ann Dvorak gets tiresome with her endless weeping and paranoid, irrational devotion to a man (Cagney) who mistreats her so...and Eric Linden, as Cagney's little brother, is just plain not appealing, and his harsh New York City accent doesn't help. Joan Blondell is his girlfriend. It doesn't work, because she is a beautiful mature woman, and Linden looks to be about 14 years old.There are some interesting things to look for in this film. Frank McHugh, Cagney's best and most ubiquitous Warner's supporting actor, plays, unusually, a wise married man, rather than his normal unattached, not too bright hanger-on. He does still get to do famous high-pitched "ha...ha" laugh a couple of times.Being a pre-Code film, look for unmarried couples in the film living in sin! And as noted by other writers, the old racing films are quite fascinating, but the endless close-ups of Cagney, Linden and NcHugh pretending to drive in front of obviously fake projection screens are tiresome indeed.Cagney's work toward the end of the film, when he plays a contrite and humbled Joe Greer, is extremely appealing, probably the best scenes in the movie. There is something quietly awesome about this little man with a critical mass of energy, desperately hanging on to a last thread of self-respect and dignity. These are beautifully acted indeed. And the scene where his tightly-wound emotions finally bubble to the surface and he collapses in sobs is definitely a highlight moment, one that I can watch over and over again.Keep your eyes on Cagney, and you won't be disappointed. And in these little throwaway movies that Warner relentlessly pumped out in the 30's, does the plot even really matter? Just give me more Cagney!

bkoganbing The Crowd Roars is probably the earliest sound feature film to be concerned with auto racing. It was probably a nice change of pace for James Cagney to get out on what was the NASCAR circuit of its day and not to be shooting people tied up with another mob.In the one film he made with Cagney, Howard Hawks does a fine job in recreating the auto racing scene of its day. Several names from those ancient days of the sport appear in this film and give it a nice air of authenticity.The problem with The Crowd Roars is that the story itself was very trite and ordinary. Younger brother Eric Linden wants to follow in Cagney's footsteps as a driver. Cagney's not crazy about his choice of female companionship in Joan Blondell. And Cagney's also reassessing his relationship with Ann Dvorak as well.Cagney's life takes an abrupt downhill turn when best friend Frank McHugh is killed. It's not unlike what happens to him in such better known Cagney films as The Roaring Twenties and Come Fill the Cup. Only this is a bit more melodramatic.I also wish there had been a bit more Guy Kibbee as Cagney and Linden's father to inject a note of levity in the proceedings. Away from the racing sequences The Crowd Roars is a rather unexciting melodrama which needed improvement other than cinematography in every department. Auto racing would have to wait for a film like Grand Prix to capture the flavor of it fully. This ain't no Grand Prix.

classicsoncall For a three time Indy race champion, Jimmy Cagney's character Joe Greer isn't as flamboyant as some of the ones he portrayed in the handful of films prior to this one. There's the spark of "The Public Enemy" Tom Powers here when he manhandles Joan Blondell, and slaps around kid brother Eddie (Eric Linden). But the story is somewhat uneven with abrupt scene changes and much left to the imagination of the viewer to piece together the motivations of the lead players. Director Howard Hawks peppers the film with cameos of the leading race car drivers of the day, and for movie goers of the era, that was probably a cool feature, but for me, names like Billy Arnold, and Fred Frame don't carry any recognition. The highlight of the movie would probably be the race sequences, and they made me wonder why anyone would take up the profession with enough dust swirling around to blacken the features and choke every driver. I guess you had to love it.As a nostalgic period piece, the movie serves well to evoke memories of the California race tracks mentioned and shown in the story. Even back in the Thirties, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that the race announcer's statement about '100 death defying laps' was anything but accurate, probably even more so than today with all the safety features built into the cars and race track itself. You have to admit, there wasn't much between the drivers and their primitive looking machines to provide escape from serious injury or death. Which made it too bad for Cagney movie regular Frank McHugh, who had to pay the price for getting between Joe Greer (Cagney) and brother Eddie in one of the movie's defining races.I think another reviewer on this board had it right about the film's closing scene in which Cagney prods his ambulance driver to out race a competitor to the hospital. The need for speed can lead to all sorts of reckless behavior, and I wasn't so sure that the movie was finding fault with that as much as glorifying it for the thrill of the audience.