Taxi

Other reviewers have covered main topics like plot, cast, etc. I'd just like to comment on some incidentals I enjoyed.

Cagney always uses such colorful language, as he does in this movie. When a fat man stands on Cagney's foot in an elevator (and I mean STANDS on it for several seconds) Cagney gets mad. Loretta Young tries to calm him down, and Cagney bursts out, "Over nothing?!? What do you expect me to do -- let a big hippo like that plant his clod-hoppers all over me?"

Incidentally, the elevator scene showed a good lesson for all would-be hat-wearers today. Young has to remind Cagney to take his hat off in the elevator -- a necessity of etiquette then, as was taking your hat off indoors, when you got where you were going. People who wear hats today, should wear hats like people who know HOW to wear hats.

Leila Bennett -- some people don't appreciate her flavor of humor, but I get a big kick out of her. She drones on and on in that adenoidal, nasal monotone, completely oblivious to whether anyone's listening or not. In fact, Cagney asks her at one point to button her lip, and Bennett just drawls, "Oh, I ain't said much," and goes on with her story. She's just droll and comical because of her personality. (In the restaurant, she says, "Well, the fish died an unnatural death. It isn't fit to eat -- even in a restaurant.")

And say -- isn't Buck Gerard a nasty, low-life villain! He's abominable! On Cagney's wedding night, he says, "I bet you HAD to marry the bim" (i.e., bimbo).

Little touches enliven this movie throughout -- like Cagney throwing his hat into Young's apartment when she's mad at him, to see if she'll leave it in or throw it back out. Charming incidentals add to the richness of the mosaic. (How poetical!)