College Times

Issue date: 7/2/09 Section: Movies

Media Credit: Universal Pictures

If it seems appropriate that "Public Enemies," director Michael Mann's film starring Johnny Depp as Depression-era bank robber and all-around gangster John Dillinger, is opening in the midst of the greatest economic meltdown in 70 years, that's because the 1930s were the golden age of the gangster film.

With their up-from-the-gutter storylines, movies like "Scarface," "The Public Enemy" and "Little Caesar" not only helped define the gangster genre but also acted as a subtle critique of the capitalist system itself.

"It's interesting to me that a major gangster film is coming out at a time when we are in a recession," says Michael L. Stephens, author of "Gangster Films." "In the 1930s, those films reflected the sentiment of the time, which still exists today, and we still identify with that anti-Wall Street, anti-establishment feeling."

"There has always been a romanticizing of the outlaw in American literature and history, but, unlike the cowboy, who exists in this sprawling landscape, gangster films are urban and appeal to audiences that live in crowded cities," adds Jay McRoy, one of the contributing writers in the forthcoming book "101 Gangster Movies You Must See Before You Die."

It's not that the gangster film hasn't changed over time. But ever since 1912, when D.W. Griffith's organized crime flick "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" jump-started the genre, the gangster flick has become an American - and eventually international - staple, reflecting the concerns and mythologies of any number of societies.

So, in the United States, those 1930s socialist/realist dramas, which tended to sympathize with the bad guy and his hardscrabble urban background, morphed in the late 1940s - thanks in part to the anti-Communism sentiment of the day - into the gangster-as-psycho film (think James Cagney in "White Heat"), the not-so-subtle message being that we're not going to glorify such antisocial behavior. "The rebel figure became identified with anti-American types," says Stephens, "where before, that was not the case."

Then came 1967 and "Bonnie and Clyde," which not only ratcheted up the violence level in gangster movies, but reflected the anarchic, anti-establishment spirit of the Vietnam era. Five years later, "The Godfather" melded myth, the family drama and an anti-capitalist critique into one classic package.

"A case could be made that the great American movie is no longer 'Gone With the Wind,' but 'The Godfather,'" says Eddie Muller, author of "The Art of Noir."

Continued...

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