Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 21: Cagney and Navy

As someone who associated James Cagney with gangster films I was surprised to see him as Bottom in the 1936 nominee A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here Comes the Navy is another Cagney film which sees him do comedy. This film sees Cagney play Chesty O'Connor a construction worker who begins a feud with Biff Martin, a navy man who steals O'Connor's girlfriend. To get back at Martin Chesty randomly decides to also join the navy, there is an interesting sequence which sees nine months of naval training condensed into about three minutes. The main story however is about Biff and Chesty's feud which intensifies when Chesty starts dating Biff's sister. Chesty is court-martialled after going AWOL to see her but redeems himself when he injures himself to save the ship during a training mission gone wrong. But the higher-ups decide that Chesty doesn't want to stay on the ship so transfer him to the aircrafts where in a bizarre twist of events involving a parachute, he ends up saving Biff's life and then becomes Biff's superior and brother-in-law when he marries his sister.

Describing Here Comes the Navy as a comedy may be a bit of a stretch because I didn't really laugh that much. Cagney's character is a bit odd always wanting to fight and I still didn't understand the motivation to join the navy to get back at someone who will then become his superior. But this must be a comedy as Chesty has a comedy sidekick in a simpleton named Droopy Mullins who is obsessed by getting his mother false teeth so she can eat meat and resume singing her favourite song, yes that really is a subplot in this film. But there's something inherently likeable and charming about this film, Cagney is an engaging presence and everything is kept quite light. While its Oscar nomination is dubious, it was only nominated for Best Picture and didn't really have a chance against It Happened One Night. Overall this isn't a very good advert for the navy who come across as stiff and dull but it's still an entertaining movie.