Classic gangster Essay Example for Free

Classic gangster Essay The portrait of Tom Powers is described in details because this hero of the classic gangster movie occupies an honorary place in a gallery of movie gangsters. He is the type of a ‘tough guy’ in the American sense of this definition. The issue of his toughness is explored in the episode of Putty Nose’s murder, the episode with his girlfriend Kitty and a grapefruit (he smacks it into her face), the scene where Tom shoots the horse that threw and killed his boss, Sam Nails Nathan, in a riding accident. In the end of the film, when his world is ruined – â€Å"[H]is brother hates him, his mother cannot claim him, his best friend, sticking by him, has been murdered, his ‘love’ has proven unattainable† (Shadoian 2003, p. 57) – the hero turns into an avenger. Tom bursts into the headquarters of a rival gang and kills the most of its members revenging for his friend’s death and the takeover of his empire. The same actor, James Cagney, was paired with Humphrey Bogart to play the ‘tough guys’ Eddie Bartlett and George Hally in The Roaring Twenties, the next movie under analysis. In comparison to The Public Enemy, where the accent was put on the factual details of a gangster’s career, The Roaring Twenties commemorated the portrait of the gangster as â€Å"the stuff of legend more than fact† with the â€Å"qualities, partially mourned, [being] emblematic of a period put behind† (Shadoian 2003, p. 31). Raeburn (1988 p. 53) also admitted that â€Å"the gangster hero [was] becoming a poignant reminder of a morally ambiguous but ultimately heroic past† in the present movie. Raeburn (1988, p. 53) gave a very convincing description of the main character’s â€Å"heroic efforts in the 1920s to create a business empire and to acquire a genteel woman who will top off his business success, a la Gatsby†. That the empire crumbles in the 1929 crash and the woman marries the dull district attorney only increase Eddies poignance. His dreams of success were exactly those of generations of American achievers, and if bootlegging is the only avenue for achievement open to him and the woman is bound by her class prejudice to choose the insipid Lloyd over him, then the fault lies not so much in Eddie as in the meretriciousness of a culture which could only provide such impoverished materials to a man of Eddies extraordinary abilities. The film is interesting for its juxtaposition of different asocial characters: Cagney’s hero as â€Å"the dynamic lead† and Bogart’s character as â€Å"the dishonorable villain as social pathology† (Leitch 2002, p. 30): Unlike Cagney, whose appeal was direct, physical, and extroverted, Bogart, who could suggest depths of worldly disillusionment beneath a crooked shell, was the perfect choice to play gangsters designed to explore the ambiguities of nongangster culture: a stifling societys thirst for cathartic violence; the need to blame intractable social problems on outside agents or to project them onto a comfortably remote history; the recognition that the gangsters power, like the western gunslingers, was for better or worse a reminder of a simpler time long past. Unlike these two representatives of the American classic gangster movies – Public Enemy and The Roaring Twenties – The Long Good Friday [Great Britain] portrays the criminal who is anything else but the object of nostalgia. As Guy Richie, director of Lock, Stock Two Smoking Barrels (1998) said to Tom Charity in the interview for Time Out (12-19 August 1998), â€Å"[P]art of what’s good about The Long Good Friday, you really did buy that these guys were villains† (cited Chibnall and Murphy 1999, p. 1). Harold Shand is a modern British tough criminal with his preference of â€Å"blustering and beleaguered patriarchy† (Chibnall and Murphy 1999, p. 2). The outer circumstances challenge his ability to retain power and balance of responsibilities. Shand has nothing in common with Tom Powers (The Public Enemy) or Eddie Bartlett and George Hally (The Roaring Twenties) except for the collapse pattern of the criminal career and the general structure of the criminal system. Like the bootlegger empire in The Roaring Twenties, Shand’s ‘kingdom’ is defended by his relationships with the corrupt members of the law-abiding clan (the local councillor Harris and the police officer Parky). Shand refers to himself as to â€Å"a businessman with a sense of history† (Hill 1999, p. 163). This dubious remark sends the spectator to his background of the ganglord and his future desire to legalise the criminal business. However, political affairs and his colleagues’ treachery prevent Shand from making his great plans come true. As the action evolves, Harold’s enemies are destroyed with cool blooded violence but, annoyingly, â€Å"pour back like an army of ants† (cited Hill 1999, p. 163). The main hero fails to keep the balance of powers and, thus, follows his American counterparts on the path of disillusionment and collapse. However, the British movie depicted the gangster who was not the relict of the bygone epoch but was familiar for the public of the 1980s from both mass-media and everyday life.