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13 Rue MadeleineWas there ever a less likely movie hardman than Jimmy Cagney? At just five feet seven inches, there wasn't a whole lot of James Francis Cagney to go around. And while his bark was pretty fierce, his lean frame left you feeling this was one guy anyone could whip. Cagney's reputation as an acting heavyweight is also pretty extraordinary when you consider that, never in the history of the world has there been anyone who behaved in quite the same way as the star of The Public Enemy and White Heat.
If he was a complete stranger to reality, it's Cagney's intensity that makes him an utterly compelling screen presence. If he's not at his most focused in 13 Rue Madeleine, it's less to do with Cagney himself than with the rather routine subject matter. The movie legend plays an Office Of Strategic Services (OSS) man charged with feeding false information to a Nazi mole. Unfortunately, the enemy spy is a canny soul who heads back to his paymasters with rather more information than Cagney's Bob Sharkey would like. So without a moment's thought for his safety, our hero heads off in hot pursuit of a man who could seriously injure the Allies' cause.
A war-era noir of the sort homaged in Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, 13 Rue Madeleine was directed by Henry Hathway, a force of nature as prone to produce misfires as masterpieces. Although it can't hold a candle to his noir proper Call Northside 777, made the following year, Hathaway nevertheless invests his war movie with some interesting elements, including a faux documentary prologue of the sort Carol Read would later employ in The Third Man.
As for the leading man, he's still interesting when he turns it up to nine, rather than his traditional 11. His co-star Richard Conte's also very good, as is Sam Jaffe, the brilliant blacklisted performer who'd score a measure of revenge over his accusers by winning the Volpi Cup at Venice for his turn in 1950's The Asphalt Jungle.
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