A Depression-downtrodden waif uses her brains instead of her body to rise from tyro con artist to crime boss.
20 Jan Blondie Johnson (1933)
Suckers
While most of the movies in this period tried to find some new way of telling the detective story, many worked on the gangster side as well. Today, we don’t quite appreciate the cleverness in the variety. I think in part because the things that didn’t get embedded in the form just aren’t seen even if you watch the movie.
Superficially, this is a story of a poor gal who climbs her way to the top of the gang ladder and falls in love along the way in spite of herself. And it has some snappy dialog of the type common in gangster movies of the era. But it has ambitions beyond that, getting darn close to sex as power, sex as beneficial crime. Blondie not only has to fight male kingpins, but she has to best their molls too.
All the sex is implied here, odd because of the time: before the code was enforced. But it permeates, even in the earliest scenes where Blondie is impoverished because she refused a screwing by the boss.
Posted in 2006
Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
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