Distributor: Warner Archive
Release Date: October 14, 2014
MSRP: $21.99
Order at Warner Archive

Film: B / Video: A / Audio: A- / Extras: A-

James Cagney’s fearsome energy, his preternatural ability to play human beings as honey badgers, at their most dangerous when cornered, is not absent from Michael Curtiz’s sentimental and propagandic biopic of early-20th-century Broadway sensation George M. Cohan. Instead, it is channeled into George’s hot-headed business dealings, erasing the discrepancy between the actor’s age and his subject’s younger days by embodying the insolence and boastfulness of youth. In his early 40s, Cagney nonetheless has the brashness of a teenager, especially one like Cohan, weaned on judgment-clouded popularity from his earliest memories.

More importantly, however, Cagney’s primal fury manifests in his dancing. He captures Cohan’s Irish-style tap-dancing with lurching steps that fling his top half forward and send his legs splaying after him. Every step, twirl, and stomp is carefully planned, but it looks like barely averted disaster. Limbs follow trajectories of near-misses, and every kick goes goes so wide and high, it’s a wonder they don’t stall out. But the net effect of watching Cagney dance like this is a state of constant suspense, albeit in the sense that one eagerly anticipates a punchline more than a tragedy. It’s elating work, and the perfect outlet for the showmanship the actor usually staged as show violence. It’s not about the technical precision of the dancing (though that is exemplary), it’s about how purely you get a read on Cagney, and Cohan, from these scenes more than those of Cohan speaking about his motivation. It’s no wonder Baryshnikov wanted to play Cagney.

So dazzling is Cagney’s bruiser hoofing that the film around these scenes can often feel perilously leaden. The misty-eyed patriotism that pervades every other line of dialogue befits the era, but it also threatens to override the more engaging scenes of George trying to break out from under the blacklisting of his own making, flattering and cajoling investors into giving him a shot. Thankfully, the talkier scenes can fall back on the gorgeous cinematography of James Wong Howe, who infuses Curtiz’s baroque but rarely revelatory style with moments of overwhelming beauty. When, for example, George has to give a song he wrote for his fiancée, Mary (Joan Leslie), to Broadway star Fay Templeton (Irene Manning) to raise funding, a gently lit shot of Fay feeling out the song at a piano facing right then cuts to Mary, facing left at the piano in George’s apartment, confidently singing the song she knows and loves as the cinematography stresses the authority of her rendition with higher contrast. It’s a small but effective moment, deliberately undercut by the knowledge that the visual power attributed to Mary is about to fade.

Not enough of the film’s 2-hour running time is given over to its stage sequences, and once George overcomes his youthful indiscretion and becomes a star, the filler scenes lose their bite. Still, Cagney gives himself over to scenes of sentimental romance and nationalist fervor as freely as he commits to the dancing. Yankee Doodle Dandy is framed around Franklin Roosevelt talking to Cohan after the latter portrays him in a stage musical, and as amusing as it is to think of the president taking hours out of his day to listen to George’s complete life story, it’s a testament to Cagney’s indefatigable charisma that you can believe FDR wouldn’t want to tear himself away.

A/V

Hot on the heels of Warner’s exquisite A/V package for Out of the Past comes yet another nearly perfect Blu-ray. Howe’s cinematography pops off the screen with healthy grain levels, fine textures and issue-free black-white contrast. In particular, the musical sequences look better than ever, capturing every reflection of glinting light and every background stage detail. The mono track is also crisp and boisterous, judiciously preserving the original sound mix to better reflect the dynamic of a stage show.

Extras

However inconsistent and frustrating Warner Archive’s DVD-Rs may be, their Blu-ray line has quickly proved one of the most rewarding of the year. In addition to the excellent transfer, the disc comes with phenomenal extras, first and foremost a minutely detailed commentary track from film historian Rudy Behlmer. We also get a simulacrum of a night at the movies in 1942, introduced by Leonard Maltin before the “program” gets underway with a trailer for Curtiz’s Casablanca, a newsreel, a wartime short and a Merrie Melodies cartoon. There’s a making-of; a brief remembrance from John Travolta, who struck up an unlikely friendship with the retired star; “You, John Jones,” a wartime short starring Cagney; and “Yankee Doodle Daffy,” a Looney Tunes cartoon. Finally, there is an audio vault containing various rehearsals and recordings related to the film, and a theatrical trailer.

Overall

While it might have made a more fitting summer release, Yankee Doodle Dandy sees Warner Archive continue to excel in high-definition.