Rent Little Caesar (1931)

Gangster Prototype. - Little Caesar review by Steve

Pioneering early sound gangster film. Credit to WR. Burnett who wrote the source novel, based on Chicago mafia boss Al Capone, which shaped the genre for the next ten years. It's a rags to riches story. A crime empire is built through violence, which is destroyed by violence- and the anti-hero's hideous flaws. This is the dark side of the American dream.

It invented the look of the mob film: the loud, expensive clothes; the big black sedans; the platinum moll in silver lingerie; the Tommy guns. But it is dated. Scenes with dialogue are static and most of the support performances are creaky. A weeping Italian mother is unbearable. There's not nearly enough of Glenda Farrell, as a pugnacious, fast-talking night club dancer.

There are the thumbprints of the studio lawyers all over this. Rico (Edward G. Robinson) can't be a charismatic figure, so he is the worst man possible: vain, disloyal, stupid, arrogant. And just in case the audience doesn't get the message there is a written homily scrolled down the screen before the film starts. The moralising is too intrusive.

Robinson dominates the screen and he creates one of the defining visual images of thirties Hollywood. There's some punchy tough guy talk but we don't see much of the prohibition or how the mob makes its money. There is fascinating social history and it's a groundbreaking film but limited by censorship and primitive technology.