IMDb plot summary: Despite his efforts to go straight, a young gangster keeps falling back into crime.
Directed by Archie Mayo. Starring Lew Ayres, James Cagney, and Dorothy Mathews.
The Doorway to Hell is a 1930 gangster movie about a man getting ready to give up a life of crime and settle down with his romantic partner. Little does he know, however, that she is cheating on him with one of the other men in his gang, and his plans to get away from that lifestyle may not work out and may instead endanger himself, his new wife, and his younger brother. This is an early James Cagney movie -- he plays the cheating friend involved with the lead's wife -- and it's interesting to see him as a side character instead of a lead, especially since the lead himself isn't very interesting in this story. In preparation for writing up this review a few days after seeing the movie, I revisited the Wikipedia page to refresh myself on the plot details and realized, to my surprise, I remembered very little of it. It all kind of blurs together for me into other gangster pictures of the same era. It certainly is one of the earlier examples, and I'm sure aficionados of the genre would notice where later movies took their lead from films like this, but it wasn't particularly interesting for me.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Doorway to Hell < The Keep
The Doorway to Hell > Big Fat Liar
The Doorway to Hell < Sullivan's Travels
The Doorway to Hell < Labor Day
The Doorway to Hell > The Devil's Brigade
The Doorway to Hell < So I Married an Axe Murderer
The Doorway to Hell > Our Paradise
The Doorway to Hell > The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
The Doorway to Hell < Tombstone
The Doorway to Hell < The Amazing Spider-Man
The Doorway to Hell < Stand and Deliver
The Doorway to Hell < After the Thin Man
Final spot: #2520 out of 3565, or 29%.
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