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American Gangster Cinema Crime Files Series American Gangster Cinema Crime Files Series General Editor: Clive Bloom Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been more popular. In novels, short stories, films, radio, television and now in computer games, private detect- ives and psychopaths, prim poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators one mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime writing, detective fiction, gangster movie, true-crime exposeÂ, police procedural and post-colonial investigation is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoretical sophistication. Published titles include: Hans Bertens and Theo D'haen CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CRIME FICTION Anita Biressi CRIME, FEAR AND THE LAW IN TRUE CRIME STORIES Ed Christian (editor) THE POST-COLONIAL DETECTIVE Paul Cobley THE AMERICAN THRILLER Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s Lee Horsley THE NOIR THRILLER Fran Mason AMERICAN GANGSTER CINEMA From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction Susan Rowland FROM AGATHA CHRISTIE TO RUTH RENDELL Crime Files Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-71471-3 (hardcover) Series Standing Order ISBN 978-0-333-93064-9 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England American Gangster Cinema From LittleCaesar to Pulp Fiction Fran Mason Q Fran Mason 2002 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2002 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. MacmillanT is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-333-68466-5 ISBN 978-0-230-59639-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230596399 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mason, Fran, 1962- American gangster cinema: from Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction/Fran Mason. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Gangster films±United States±History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.G3 M37 2002 791.43'655±dc21 2002026948 10987654321 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements viii A Chronology of the Gangster Film ix Introduction xiii 1Modernity and theClassic Gangster Film 1 1 Silent and early sound contexts for the `classic' cycle 1 1 The `classic' cycle in its critical context 5 1 Little Caesar: an untypical`classic' 8 1 The gangster and modernity 13 1 ThePublic Enemy:modernity, space, and masculinity 16 1 The gangster and the gang 22 1 Scarface: everything to excess 24 1 Repressing modernity: the studios and the Hays Office 28 2The Post-Code Gangster: Ideology and Social Conscience 31 1 The return of ideology: the G-Man and early post-moratorium variations 32 1 The social gangster 39 1 `He used to be a big shot': The Roaring Twenties, history, modernity,and the gangster 47 3The Death o f the Big Shot: the Gangster inthe 1940s 51 1 Early variations of the 1940s 53 1 High Sierra: re-visiting and renewing the genre 54 1 Revisiting the familyplot 60 1 The post-war big shot 63 4 Outside Society, Outside the Gang:the Alienated Noir Gangster 72 1 Post-war transitions: film noir's cultural and cinematic context 72 1 Film noir and its discourses 74 1 Gangsters and film noir 77 1 The emasculated male in early gangster noir 79 1 From small gangs to big business 87 v vi Contents 1 Late gangster noir: the triumphof technology 94 5Order and Chaos, Syndicates and Heists 97 1 Heists: rationalised gangs and fragmented individuals 98 1 Syndicates and rogue cops: un-American visions 105 6 Nostalgia and Renewal in the Post-Classical Gangster Film120 1 From retro to modern: gangsters in the 1960s 122 1 The gangster film as epic: TheGodfather trilogy 129 1 Gangsters on the margins: the gangster±loser film andblaxploitation 136 7 The Postmodern Spectacle of the Gangster 141 1 The gangster film in the 1980s 142 1 Postmodern inflections 146 1 Postmodern gangsters: spectacleand simulation 151 1 The `gangsta' film: spectacle and urban realism 154 1 Fantasies of escape: Carlito'sWayand True Romance 157 1 Pulp Fiction and after: postmodern gangsters or postmodern film 160 Notes 165 Bibliography 170 Index 176 Preface The American film gangster is an iconic figure of the industrial twenti- eth century in both its modern and postmodern forms, representinga culture of mobility, urban space, excess, and individual licence. He is also, however, an anti-social figure within this context because he is the focus for a liberation from hierarchy and from the past (in his embrace of the modern) that society and ideology wish to repress. One of the iconic images of the gangster genre is of a sharply dressed gangster holding a gun appearing out of the shadows with himself either silhou- etted against a wall or throwing a shadow forward. This image enacts the gangster's problematic status. He is a figure of a shadowy world of crime that legitimate ideological society wishes to deny but whose shadow falls across official society's world of honest toil, discipline, order, and contained individuality, threatening to dominate or displace it with his own ideology of the pleasure principle, excess, chaos, and individual self-gratification. The film gangster, therefore, represents a seminal figure in the history of twentieth-century culture, forming the focus for a range of tensions that have dominated the discourses of industrialised society. These range from the role of the individual within an increasingly rationalised society, the impact of urban space (and its association with the fractur- ing discourses of modernity and postmodernity), the tension between tradition and themodern, the opposition between labour and pleasure, and particularly the relationship between ideology and freedom. The gangster genre forms a focus for these tensions in its representation of the individual in opposition to society and represents an attemptto engage with the actuality of twentieth-century culture throughthe displaced persona of the gangster so that, even thoughherepresents concerns that may appear to be predominantly masculine, healso ar- ticulates wider tensions and contradictions that attach to the simpleact of living everyday life in the modern period. What follows in this account of the American gangster film is an attempt to understand how the gangster is located within these tensions and contradictions and how audiences are attracted to the genre because it offers, in its fantasies of gangster criminality and individual liberation, an alterna- tive to living ideologically that, in the content of the films, provides a spectacle of pleasure and freedom otherwise unavailable. vii Acknowledgements Thanks are due to several of my colleagues at King Alfred's College. Much of the groundwork for this book was laid in conversation with Alasdair Spark whom I would also like to thank for providing research support throughout this project. Thanks are also owed to Leighton Grist for his help in tracking down copies of difficult to obtain movies and to Andrew Blake and Carol Smith for their encouragement throughout the writing of this book. My thanks also go to Kathy Parkes and Lyn Black who provided much needed administrative help, particularlyinthe final stages of writing. I would also like to thank Clive Bloom, of Middlesex University, for his perceptive comments on the manuscript as well as my editors at Palgrave, Rebecca Mashayekh and Emily Rosser, for their patience and help over the course of writing this book. Thanks are also due to Martin Humphries at the Ronald Grant Archive and Nina Harding at theBFI Stills Archive for their kind assistance and advice. viii A Chronology of the Gangster Film The following forms a select filmography of the gangster film since 1912 with the name of the director in parentheses followed by annotations in bold to offer some sense of the concerns or sub-genre attached to each film. 1912 Musketeers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith) silent gangster 1914 The Gangsters and the Girl (Thomas Ince) silent gangster 1915 Regeneration (Raoul Walsh) gangster melodrama 1927 Underworld (Josef von Sternberg) silent melodrama 1928 The Racket (Lewis Milestone) cops-and-robbers 1929 Alibi (Roland West) smalltime hood 1930 Doorway to Hell (Archie Mayo) rise and fall of the big shot 1930 Little Caesar (Mervyn Le Roy) classic/rise and fall of the big shot 1931 Quick Millions (Rowland Brown) racketeering/rise and fall 1930 ThePublic Enemy (William Wellmann) classic/foot soldier 1930 Smart Money (Alfred E.
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