3.3 The Gangster Film

3.3 The Gangster Film 

 As early as 1912, gangsters were portrayed in D.W Griffith’s Musketeers Of Pig Alley (1912) – a short that depicted the tough street gangs of New York City, specifically the slums of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, preying on the innocent. To bring realism to the scenes, actual gang members were hired as extras, creating an atmosphere and introducing characteristics that would later become part of the quintessential screen gangster – the cocky swagger, charm and code of honour.

Honoured as the first ‘gangster film’, Musketeers Of Pig Alley depicts the gangsters as how they were perceived at the time – street hoodlums and thugs, armed with knuckle-dusters, knives and bats. It would still be some years before Prohibition would backfire and literally create the silk-suited, gun-toting mobster, awash with money from bootleg money and the clout to corrupt politicians and the law. However, it holds its’ place in film history.

Film Clip - The Musketeers of Pig Alley.
D.W.Griffith. First gangsters movie.
Link Here

New Part - Gangster Films (Hays Code started 1934)

All that would change with the release of three films in the Pre-Code era– two by Warner Brothers within the space of a year and another by the eccentric Howard Hughes. All three would change cinema and the reverberations from those three films are still with us today. Those films were Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both 1931) and Scarface (1932).

The public concept of the gangster was now well-entrenched, not by Hollywood but by the headlines in newspapers and even what people where witnessing in their own neighborhoods and cities. The very law whose aim was to enforce morality upon American society would in essence to do the very opposite – Prohibition (1920-1933) would end up encouraging people to drink, there would more drinking establishments in operation than before Prohibition and it turned ordinary people into law-breakers. Everyone knew where to get an illegal drink. 

The 1920s was a time flush with money, especially for the new rising gangsters who not only intended to make more money but also intended to keep control of how they made it – and show they were here to stay. The public admired some of these ‘colorful characters’, providing a service against what many believed was an unjust law.

But it was the Depression (1929-1932) that would truly cement the persona in the public’s mind as a lone wolf railing against his circumstances and making it big, only to lose it all. There might have been the underlying morality tale of the wrongs of crime but the public suffering the effects of the Depression connected – they felt the system had failed and they were powerless to act. Even the politicians had no answer. Yet the gangsters seemed to have one – and audiences admired this.

The three aforementioned films (Those films were Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both 1931) and Scarface (1932)). would appeal to audiences for these reasons and more. Producers were switched on enough to know that sex and violence in films meant greater profits, and with the Depression (1929-1932) having a disastrous impact on the film industry, the studios upped the ante.

Both Little Caesar and The Public Enemy tell the story of the meteoric rise and fall of tough guys Enrico ‘Little Caesar’ Bandello (Edward G Robinson) and Tom Powers (James Cagney), marked by ruthlessness and violence. The glamor of crime was obviously appealing to an audiences but the warning of what would befall anyone entering the world of crime was also clear.  The allegory was obvious – the system could not be defeated and one needed to accept the world as it was, or face the consequences that Enrico Bandello and Tom Powers would.

What also unites the films is that despite the violent endings of all three films and the underlying morality tale, Bandello, Powers and Camonte were not seen as the ‘bad guy’ by audiences and it was the authorities that audiences wanted to see fail in their pursuit of these criminal upstarts. Audiences transferred their frustrations with the so-called American Dream, inept government and corrupt officials onto the authorities they saw on the screen.

Robinson, Cagney and Muni were already established actors but their portrayals would launch them into the stratosphere. All three would not necessarily be typecast and their versatility would see them in a range of roles throughout their career. But both Robinson and Cagney would play gangsters again, bringing different approaches with storylines directed by the Hays Production Code.

It was no accident that Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and later George Raft would be working at Warner Brothers – the studio that would establish and dominate the gangster film cycle of the 1930s, in much the same way that Universal established the classic horror cycle. All the major studios would make gangster films but Warner Brothers defined it. There was a stylistic imprint that the studio had, particularly in the mid 1930s to early 1940s,
which stood out with a crisp, cinematic composition,
fast dialogue
and honed characterization.

The new code (1934) would change the gangster genre almost as soon as it was born.
Whilst sex and violence was an issue,
the real concerns were that the gangster was the focus for audiences and not the authorities fighting crime.
As a result, the focus would switch – in a number of ways.
1.Gangsters could be shown in a totally negative light as plot devices for the main story as in Manhattan Melodrama (1934), The Petrified Forest (1935), Kid Galahad (1937) and The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1938).
2.There would also be a shift to the authorities pursuing the criminals as in G-Men (1935), Bullets Or Ballots (1936) and Marked Woman (1937).
3.Finally, the criminal or gangster could be depicted finally seeking salvation as in San Quentin (1937), Angels Wear Dirty Faces (1938) and Invisible Stripes (1939).

 
*Incidentally, Edward G Robinson, James Cagney, George Raft and Humphrey Bogart would appear in these films, playing across these shifts, in both gangster and authority roles.

- Paul Batters, Silver Screen Classics - Link Here

GANGSTERS AND PSYCOPATHS
In Raymond Durgnat's 1970 essay "Paint it Black: A Family Tree of Film Noir," (I have link on other page.) he touches on The Public Enemy as being representative of 2 categories of "main lines in force of the American film noir:" Gangsters and Psychopaths.

GANGSTERS

"Public opinion turned against the gangster before Hollywood denounced him with the famous trans-auteur triptych, Little Caesar, Scarface and Public Enemy. To (Howard) Hawks simple-minded propaganda piece (Scarface), one may well prefer the daring, pro and contra-alternation of Public Enemy. The mixture of social fact and moralizing myth in pre-war gangster movies is intriguing. . ." (Film Noir Reader, pg. 43)

PSYCHOPATHS

"Film noir psychopaths, who are legion,
 are divisible into three main groups:
1)The heroes with a tragic flaw,
2)The unassuming monsters and
3)The obvious monsters,
( in particular, the Prohibition-type gangster).

Cagney's  Public Enemy criss-crosses the boundaries between them,
thus providing the moral challenge and suspense which is the film's mainspring.
Cagney later contributes a rousing portrait of a gangster with a raging Oedipus complex in White Heat, from Hollywood's misogynistic period. Trapped on an oil storage tank, he cries exultantly: "On top of the world, ma!" before joining his dead mother via the auto-destructive orgasm of his own personal mushroom cloud. . ." 

"On our right, we find the simple a satisfying view of the psychopath as a morally responsible mad dog deserving to be put down (thus simple, satisfying films like Scarface and Panic in Year Zero).
On the left, he is an ordinary, or understandably weak, or unusually energetic character whose inner defects are worsened by factors outside of his control (Public Enemy, The Young Savages).

These factors (outside of his control) may be summarized as war gangster movies is intriguing. . ." 

1. slum environments
2. psychological traits subtly extrinsic to character (neurosis) and 
3. a subtly corrupting social morality

In Depression (1929-1932) America, the first explanation seems plausible enough (Public Enemy  (1931) with exceptional thoughtfulness goes for all three explanations while insisting that he's become a mad dog who must die)." (Film Noir Reader, pg. 49)