Picture Snatcher

Picture Snatcher (1933)

Runtime: 77 minutes

Directed by: Lloyd Bacon

Starring: James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis, Alice White, Ralf Harolde

From: Warner Bros.

I should watch old movies more often. I enjoyed this, as I explain below:

It's been a few months since I had seen a movie this old so I figured this was a good time for a change of pace, and I was pretty entertained by this movie. Long before today, I had heard this compared to Nightcrawler, and only in a few ways that is true. The plot is about mobster James Cagney being released from prison, and because of his alcoholic pal (Ralph Bellamy) he gets a job at a newspaper, but it's the tabloid paper of New York City. That newspaper is incredibly lurid so Cagney takes scandalous pictures. He gets into hot water after taking a photo of a woman being executed by electrocution. Amazingly, it's loosely based on a real life incident in the 20's where a woman named Ruth Snyder was executed for murdering her husband and a reporter by the name of Tom Howard snuck a camera in and took a picture. Personally, I am not surprised that the newspaper who asked Howard to do this is the rag known as the New York Daily News. Howard actually has a Hollywood connection, as one of his grandsons is George Wendt and one of his great-grandsons is Jason Sudeikis; no kidding.

As this is an old-timey movie, there is a romance, although at least I found it amusing because Cagney was fooling around with a young woman and he soon discovers her dad is a cop that once arrested him. He isn't creepy or disturbing like Lou Bloom was but Old James still was quite sleazy in this role. He slapped around women, talked crap to everyone, and in a moment that made me lol, he even spoke in a high-pitched voice so he could impersonate a woman while talking on the phone. It's all entertaining, mainly because of Cagney's natural charisma and star power.

The story is quite wacky but as it's only 77 minutes long it never overstays its welcome, let alone become boring. There is time for a big shootout for those that mark out for such things in 30's gangster pictures. There are even some poignant moments, but what I'll remember the most are the satirical barbs and potshots taken against the sensational and exploitative media, which sadly are more relevant now than they were back in '33, which is why we have such things as the movie Nightcrawler and the loathsome entity known as TMZ.

In a moment that is funnier now than it was back then, early on Cagney takes a bath, and BATH SALTS are used. However, it was actual bath salts and not those drugs that cause you to becomes psychotic. Anyhow, I do know I should watch these random '30's movies more often.