In The Roaring Twenties (1939), James Cagney played Eddie Bartlett, a First World War veteran who becomes a bootlegger during Prohibition and then struggles to find a place in a changing America. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the film follows Eddie from the trenches to the speakeasies and finally to a bleak, rain-soaked ending that has become one of the most famous in gangster cinema.
Cagney’s Eddie is more reflective than his earlier gangsters. He is loyal to his friends, generous to those in need, and increasingly aware that the world he helped to build has moved on without him. The performance shows Cagney’s range: the same energy that made Tom Powers terrifying is here tempered by weariness and decency.
The Roaring Twenties is both a gangster film and a history of a decade, and Cagney is its centre throughout. It remains a high point of his career and of the genre itself.