The usual route for Walsh is to slow the development by increasing specificity. It is very cunning: by the time his gangster comes apart, is shot down, or shoots his way through an ambush, Waslh has slyly doubled and tripled every move that the gangster makes in terms of height, texture, path, angle, and sound. Cagney’s psychotic break in the penitentiary dining hall involves a messy noisy tantrum after he hears his beloved Ma has been gunned down. Every move Cagney makes has been counterpointed and varied. His incredible frenzy literally swimming through cutlery and china down the length of a table has been twice anticipated with a slow camera dolly down the table and back, picking out each diner who gets splashed and shocked by Cagney’s tantrum crawl across the table. Cagney’s running battle through a half-dozen guards spaced at crucial spots around the hall has been anticipated by a quiet over-the-hall long shot as the prisoners file in and angle off into the various aisles. The battle itself is a frenzy improvised with perfect Cagney instincts: characteristically it is a mesh of variations on pace and height ending with Cagney being carried by the guards down the aisles and out the hall, above their heads like a frantically struggling fish on a tray.
Manny Farber, “Raoul Walsh,” in Farber on Film (Library of America, 2009), 702-03.
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