Bloody and brutal, why do we love every little nuance about these gangsters, films and shows?
By David Cohea, ReMIND Magazine
There’s a scene in the HBO series The Sopranos where Tony Soprano’s gang is hanging out in a backroom of the Bada Bing strip club, counting the day’s take from some illegal operation. On the TV, an organized crime expert talks about the decline of the mob in America. While the group grimaces at their pressing reality, Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) rises to do his Michael Corleone impression from The Godfather: Part III. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” he mutters, flailing his hands. The wiseguys all laugh — and keep counting.
Some things are eternal, like vice, dirty deeds and our fascination with those who deal in such things. America has always loved its outlaws and naked peeks into the criminal night world.
That fascination is as old as printing presses and cheap pamphlets in Elizabethan England decrying “Murder Most Foul!” in lurid detail. In the 19th century, dime novels reveled in the escapades of Billy the Kid and Jesse James. All this would blossom darkly with the advent of movies. Early silent gangland classics include The Black Hand (1906), The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) and Underworld (1927), starring Clive Brook as “Rolls Royce” Wensel and George Bancroft as “Bull” Weed.
During the roaring Jazz Age of the 1920s, wealth and crime were closely woven, with Prohibition-era speakeasies furnished with illicit booze by the likes of Al Capone. Gangland wars were epic both on the street and in the popular imagination, and characters inspired by triggermen like Machine Gun Kelly returned again and again to the silver screen.
Two early talkies, The Public Enemy starring James Cagney and Little Caesar with Edward G. Robinson, are considered classics of gangland cinema. The unrelenting violence and mayhem of organized crime found perfect expression in the two, with Robinson shooting his way to the bottom of the Chicago crime barrel and Cagney as the face of unbridled fury (except when turned toward his beloved mother).
The popular romance with gangsters grew as the Depression set in, with bank robbers getting some measure of comeuppance against a reviled banking system. John Dillinger’s exploits would be parlayed to the big screen many times, including Public Hero No. 1 (1935), High Sierra (1941) with Humphrey Bogart, Dillinger (1945) starring Lawrence Tierney, Baby Face Nelson (1957) with Leo Gordon, Dillinger (1973) starring Warren Oates and Public Enemies (2009) starring Johnny Depp. There was also a 1991 TV film, called Dillinger, which starred Mark Harmon.
In the film noir of the ’40s and ’50s, cops and robbers vied for the hearts of women who wanted it both ways (and so did we). Set deep in the night when evil comes out from under its rock to play, crime bosses and hoodlums crossed paths with flatfoots and G-men, and there always was a woman half in shadow nearby, deciding between light and darkness — Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross (1949) and Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat (1953).
Sometimes women stepped into the leading role — Faye Emerson played a bank robber in Lady Gangster (1942) as did Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy (1950). Then there were all of those evil femme fatales — Lizabeth Scott in Too Late for Tears (1949) or Jane Greer against Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past (1947).
With the advent of television, shows focused on crime-fighters who could deal hard hits to the mob — like the ABC series The Untouchables (1959-63), starring Robert Stack as the unbeatable Eliot Ness fighting crime in 1930s Chicago. In ABC’s Naked City (1958-63), detectives of the NYPD’s 65th Precinct took on the city’s ne’er-do-wells. (Every episode concluded with: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.”) Efrem Zimbalist Jr. played another G-man as Inspector Lewis Erskine on ABC’s The F.B.I. (1965-74). These no-nonsense, “just-the-facts, ma’am” crime-fighters were clean-cut and powerfully groomed, giving the impression that crime didn’t stand a chance against the minions of law and order.
In the late 1960s, Hollywood’s Hays Code (the motion picture censorship guidelines) was abandoned, allowing studios and filmmakers greater latitude to address formerly off-topic subjects. Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) reveled in the Depression-era bank robber Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) and his girlfriend Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway). Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) starred Robert De Niro as an up-and-coming mobster whose faith was at war with the call of the streets.
But it was Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 movie The Godfather that would become the standard for gangland opera. Based on Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel, the film and its two sequels, The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Part III (1990), tell the story of the Corleone family over generations of crime in a growing America. Richly set in a time mostly lost (the cars themselves are wonders) and driven by stellar performances from Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and De Niro, The Godfather won three Academy Awards including Best Picture, The Godfather: Part II won six, also including Best Picture, and Part III earned seven nominations but no wins.
With the success of The Godfather, other gangland classics rolled out to hungry fans of the genre: Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone’s Scarface (1983) starring Pacino; Carlito’s Way (1993) with Pacino again, this time trying to break free of his gangland past; Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) starring Ray Liotta, De Niro and Joe Pesci (who would pick up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar); Casino (1995), another Scorsese epic starring De Niro, Sharon Stone and Pesci; and The Godfather: Part III with Pacino back again as Michael Corleone.
Which brings us back to The Sopranos — the sometimes funny, often gruesome and painfully suburban tale of a contemporary crime family. After so much had been said and done in the movies and on TV, the show marked a sea change for TV drama and HBO. Running for six seasons, The Sopranos would earn 21 Primetime Emmy Awards, including two for Outstanding Drama Series, the first series on a cable network to do so. James Gandolfini and Edie Falco would pick up the Outstanding Lead Actor and Actress award three times each. In its 2016 ranking of the top TV series of all time, Rolling Stone placed The Sopranos at No. 1.
And most recently we have The Irishman, a gangland epic reprising one of the best crime-movie directors, Scorsese, with old gangland hands De Niro, Pacino and Pesci.
Just when we thought we were getting out, they pull us back in!
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