Gangster movie

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The gangster film is a subgenre within the crime film genre . A characteristic of the associated films is the depiction of illegal activities, in which the social and / or psychological development of the criminals, often in connection with entire criminal organizations , is the focus. American actors like Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney gave the gangster film , which had an early heyday in the 1930s (especially in the USA ), a first face. The subgenre has since developed in different directions.

features

The gangster film subgenre is a broad field in which the so-called classic circle, which includes the films The Little Caesar , The Public Enemy and Scarface , is understood as a core element. A number of thematic, iconographic and ideological standards were set in it, which could already be understood as basic characteristics in themselves. In order to be able to fully grasp the more than 75-year history of the gangster film, these standards can only be seen as a reference point from which numerous variations have emerged. A similar group to the gangster film within the crime film genre is the crook comedy in the genre of film humor .

Subgenres of the gangster film

Within this subgenre, the heist movie and the serial killer film are often viewed as individual groups that can be distinguished. The prison film was originally a pure sub-genre of the classic gangster film. Since the 1970s, prison film has increasingly incorporated aspects of other genres, such as action films , adventure films and sports films. Poliziottesco is a genre of films from Italy. Often all Italian films with a police, mafia or gangster connection are described with this term. The classic Poliziottesco is a subspecies of the police film . Another sub-genre is that of the yakuza films . These are special mafia films that deal with the activities of the Yakuza criminal organization .

subjects

  • Rise and fall narrative: A classic, central motif of the gangster film is the rise and fall of a criminal. Whether they are fictional or real people, the film's arc of suspense almost always increases parallel to the gangster's career, which ultimately collapses, be it through arrest or death. Until the 1960s, there were seldom deviations from this motif in the USA , which only changed decisively with the Godfather saga (from 1972).
  • Gangster as a tragic figure: The portrayal of the gangster as a lonely, desperate outlaw is typical of the films of the classic cycle. This was aimed less at glorification than at showing the gangster as a subject of the modern world with all its temptations.
  • Family versus gang: A motif that was first worked out in The Public Enemy is the conflict of the future gangster between the love of his family and the lure of being a gang. The urge for freedom and the gain in masculinity that is made possible by the gang plays a decisive role here.
  • Cain and Abel: A first variation of the classic cycle can be found in Manhattan Melodrama (1934) and also Chicago - Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). It is - similar to Cain and Abel - about two brothers or childhood friends, one of whom has a career as a police officer or the like. hits and the other becomes a criminal.
  • Gangster as cop: This is a topic that arose as a result of the Production Code , because it forbade depicting illegal violence - the gangster figure was simply disguised as a police officer, who of course was on the “good side”. The definitive film for this cycle was The FBI Agent (1935).
  • Death of the big shot: The "death of the big beast" is a break with the classic rise-and-fall theme that emerged with a decision in the Sierra in 1941 . Instead of the whole life story of a gangster, only his last days - with the special coup of course - are shown.
  • Couple on the run: The gangster couple who go on a looting tour as if intoxicated, have been around since Dangerous Passion from 1949 at the latest and continued in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Thelma & Louise (1991) is just one example of numerous reinterpretations of this topic.
  • The big caper: With the description of the planning and execution of a complicated robbery, according to some film critics, a separate sub-genre has emerged, the heist movie . The forerunner of this form was the film Asphalt Dschungel (1950), but the majority of the caper movies come from the 1960s.
  • Syndicate film: Around the same time as the Heist film, the variant of the syndicate film was created, in which the gang as a whole (the “syndicate”) is the focus of attention. The individual gangster is de-individualized, while the gang is portrayed as an apparatus that controls everything. Examples are The Track Leads to the Harbor (1951) and the San Francisco Murder Syndicate (1952).

After the collapse of the studio system in the 1970s, these classifications appear more than artificial. Since then, earlier topics have often been taken up and filmed in nostalgic fashion (e.g. Jagd auf Dillinger , 1973) or reinvented. With The Godfather (1972), a gangster film of epic proportions was made for the first time. Much of the gangster film flowed into the blaxploitation films.

The directors of the New German Film had a particular preference for gangster stories :

“' Love is colder than death ', [Fassbinder's] first feature film, is one of a number of gangster films (including ' Gods of the Plague ', 1970, and ' The American Soldier ', 1970) in which [he] was out of sympathy for the old American gangster film, but especially for Godard and Melville (' The Ice Cold Angel ', 1967) makes no secret. "

Iconography and ideology

Although the earliest gangster stories took place in the Wild West ( The Great Train Robbery ), the action soon began to focus on the big city. This place is not only characterized by industry and mass-produced goods, but also by anonymity combined with individual freedom - the best prerequisite for the hustle and bustle of criminal gangs.

The earlier gangster films were a reflection of the time they were made, mostly intertwined with alcohol prohibition and the Great Depression in the United States. In addition to the open street, popular locations were mainly backyard-like taverns, where illegal drinks were bottled and plans were forged, similar to the speakeasys of the time . However, from the late 1930s, i.e. almost from the beginning of the war, the present offered fewer incentives to write gangster stories, so that the iconography of the classical era was increasingly taken up, for example in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

A central aspect of all gangster films is the social structure described in each case, from which further interpretations can be derived. The gang into which the gangster fits is often the mirror or model of society. Gangster gangs can represent certain ethnic groups, youth cliques, or families, but couples in love and loners also appear as criminals. The gang in The Public Enemy (1931) functions as a strictly managed working group in which everyone can contribute and in return is protected by the other members - something that the righteous society of Prohibition could not offer.

Gangster films almost always ask about the reasons why a person becomes a criminal. In addition to economic decline, the most important approaches include false morals, influences in childhood development, foreign origins of the gangsters (the main characters of the three classics The Little Caesar , The Public Enemy and Scarface all come from Catholic immigrant families) or simply unfortunate coincidence. What they all have in common is a deviation from the social norm, and thus the gangster film indirectly demands compliance with this norm so that one does not become a criminal himself. The statement of the classic Hollywood gangster film is archetypal: Crime doesn't pay off.

This statement was strongly supported in the days of the Production Code : Often the films were preceded by warning text panels that attempted to dismiss the glorification of criminals, for example in Scarface (1932), which was even subtitled Shame of the Nation for a short time (Shame of the Nation) got missed.

This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. Every incident in this picture is a reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government: 'What are you going to do about it?' The government is your government. What are YOU going to do about it?

“This film denounces the power of gangs in America and the government's indifference to this growing threat to our freedom and security. All of the events in this film are based on real events. The film calls on the government to finally do something. You voted for the government! What do YOU ​​intend to do? "

- Opening credits of the American film Scarface

historical overview

Mute forerunners

If one takes the mere representation of a crime as a criterion, The Great Railway Robbery (1903), known as the first western in film history , is the first gangster film. But the metropolitan criminal gangs, which are an essential part of the upcoming films, are probably the first focus of DW Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley from 1912. In European film, the series heroes of the Frenchman Louis Feuillade - Fantômas (1913/14) and even more so the criminal gang Les Vampires (1915) - were the first representatives of the genre. Many stylistic features of the later gangster film were then also used in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the player (1922) anticipated - in addition to shootings and car chases, for example, the gloomy image design.

Josef von Sternberg took another step in 1927 when he presented his film Unterwelt . In it, clear accents are set for the first time on the reality that prevailed during the alcohol prohibition in the USA, but the film remains essentially a love drama. Also, The Racket 1928 or alibi of 1929 deal with the gangster theme apart, but it was only the sound film should bring the breakthrough.

The early classics of the gangster film

The sound film, which emerged from 1927, paved the way for a number of new film genres in the USA, including horror films and musical films . The tone was also decisive for the gangster film, as on the one hand noises such as the screeching of tires, the ringing of telephones or the machine gun fire created a realistic backdrop and on the other hand the synchronicity of the dialogues allowed a more precise characterization. As with Josef von Sternberg, Prohibition , the alcohol ban in the USA from 1919 to 1933, and the developing structures and the milieu of organized crime provided templates for the first gangster films.

With The Little Caesar by director Mervyn LeRoy , which appeared in January 1931, the cycle of classic gangster films (classic circle) began. The film, which tells the story of the gang member Rico Bandello, lives above all from Edward G. Robinson's psychologically differentiated examination of his character: He is a born petty criminal who builds up a no-frills facade around himself, but remains impulsive, deceitful and stupid . Robinson's portrayal of "little Caesar", whose resemblance to Al Capone is unmistakable, made him an established criminal actor.

"He wants to keep going up, more and more money and influence, and yet in the end it's all about confirmation of his own identity."

Just a few months later, William A. Wellman's The Public Enemy premiered , after Little Caesar , another film that depicts the rise and fall of a gang member. He has a strong focus on the societal causes of crime in times of depression . The beginning of the film is dedicated to several scenes from the childhood of Tom Powers. Thereupon he quickly develops into an unscrupulous gangster who brutally uses his newfound freedom to defend himself against economic misery. The famous scene in which he presses a grapefruit in his girlfriend's face shows his blatant disproportion to the opposite sex.

"To go to school? It just means staying poor. ” - Tom Powers in The Public Enemy

Another important film is Howard Hawks ' masterpiece Scarface from 1932. Its mystifying portrayal of Tony Camonte who breaks out a gang war set new standards for violence in film. The number of murders is record-breaking, and one action scene follows another - Ben Hecht's script was originally intended as a semi-documentary work. Scarface plays much more than his two predecessors with shadows and symbols, portrays journalists and police officers as ruthless fanatics and problematizes Tony's love for his sister. The camera, which always stays at a distance, gives the film a certain sobriety.

It is remarkable what influence the film censorship, namely the Hays Code , had on the aesthetics of the films. According to the code, it was forbidden to explicitly show murders and robberies. Thus the filmmakers had to find other, more subtle ways of depicting violence - playing with shadows, off- screen shots and other hints was stimulated and established as a stylistic device even beyond the time of the Hays Code.

In 1935, The FBI Agent appeared , which marked a turnaround in gangster film: The focus is not on the gangsters themselves, but on the police officers who are following them. Stylistically, the film is so reminiscent of typical gangster films that one could almost speak of “gangsters in police uniform”. The decisive factor for this type of film was, among other things, the Hays Code, which approved the representation of legal violence rather than that of illegal violence.

Towards the end of the decade, the classics were celebrated again by more or less taking up in new films. Chicago (1938) by Michael Curtiz and The Wild Twenties (1939) by Raoul Walsh , in which two icons of the gangster film, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart , are considered the best-known films of the late phase of classic gangster films .

Most of the 1930s gangster films were produced by Warner Bros. , the production company that also had the most famous actors in the genre ( Robinson , Cagney , George Raft and Bogart ). There was also the small Monogram Pictures , which specialized in gangster films.

“The Warner Bros. gangster films brought a new color to the cinema. [...] Images of a different American way of life, as brief as they are gross, as direct as rapid, images that accentuate the violence of the events the films told. "

Gangster film as film noir

The gangster film was a good breeding ground for the film noir , to which a number of American films of the 1940s and 1950s are attributed. The typical characters of film noir are weak, insecure and disillusioned, which could easily be transferred to a gangster figure. Decision in the Sierra (1941), the film that made Humphrey Bogart a star, is the starting point of gangster noir (although the French Pépé le Moko - In the Dark of Algiers , 1937, can be seen as a trailblazer). Unlike the classics, it does not tell about the entire career of a criminal, but begins right before his last coup. The death of gangster Roy Earle is predictable by the mood of the film and is meaningfully staged on a mountain top. The gangster in film noir has transformed from a tragic outsider to a romantic antihero.

The noir gangster film then consolidated with works such as Die Scarhand (1942), which portrays a contract killer who doesn't like anyone but cats and for whom there is no way out but death, Avengers of the Underworld (1946) or Dangerous Passion (1949). Unlike in the earlier gangster films, the protagonists of the films noirs often form a close bond with attractive but difficult to understand femmes fatales , which later becomes their undoing. In Leap to Death (1949), a film by Raoul Walsh that tells the rampage of a manic maniac, his psychological development is particularly emphasized. The prison refugee, played by James Cagney , who wants to avenge his mother's death, ends up on an exploding gas tank while he says triumphantly: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world! "

"With a diffuse light that intensifies the gray values, Walsh poets his story: the strangeness of the heroes in shabby motels, their forlornness on the streets, their psychological deformation, their entanglement in powers that they never really understand."

Small renaissance in the 1950s

In the transition from the era of film noir to the fall of the studio system in the USA (marked by the beginning of New Hollywood ), a series of films were made that revived the old heroes of the early 1930s. Gangster biographies such as Al Capone (1959), The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) or Baby Face Nelson (1957) - with the prefiguring German title So they all end - are the best examples here. Other well-known works of this time are JD, the Killer and Underworld (both 1960).

Japanese gangster film - Yakuza

→ Main article: Yakuza movie

The Japanese gangster film, which had the greatest output in the 1960s, was mainly devoted to the Japanese mafia, the yakuza . The yakuza films were often bloody and brutal and romanticized crime. Notable yakuza directors are Seijun Suzuki and Kosaku Yamashita .

"Director Suzuki's cruel, sartrian heroes are all monsters, whether in a pastel blue western style suit or as a hamster-cheeked rice smell fetishist."

Takeshi Kitano ( Brother , 2000) also excelled in this genre .

French gangster film

In the mid-1950s, the three French gangster films that were to shape the genre were made: When night falls in Paris (1954) with Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura , Jules Dassin's Rififi (1955), and Three o'clock in the morning (1965) by Jean-Pierre Melville . Melville was to make the most important French gangster films in the following decade. His works The Devil with the White Waistcoat (1962), The Ice Cold Angel (1967) and Four in a Red Circle (1970) form the essence of a special gangster style. Taking up the innovations of the Nouvelle Vague , but also processing elements of the American gangster film, these films put everything on the pure aesthetics of the images and the professionalism of the depicted criminality. Jean-Luc Godard's Out of Breath (1960) can be seen as the forerunner of these films. Other important French directors who played a key role in this genre were José Giovanni - also as a screenwriter - ( The Man from Marseille , 1972), Henri Verneuil ( The Sicilian Clan , 1969) and Jacques Deray ( Flic Story , 1975). Alain Delon , Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura were able to position themselves as key actors in the French gangster film .

Criminals in New Hollywood

Bonnie Parker was the model for the film Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The New Hollywood cinema marked the end of the traditional studio system that had dominated American cinema into the 1960s. It broke with the old narrative structures, characterizations and themes, such as the escapist acting monumental or musical films. In addition, the stories of the big gangsters of the economic crisis had long been too trite to be remade.

That changed at the latest with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), the film that is seen together with The Graduation as the starting point of the new Hollywood. It's about the career of a gangster couple in Texas in the 1930s. The film shows clear signs of a trend reversal in gangster films: The protagonists are given the attitude towards life and the optimism of the 1960s, which makes them popular with the audience. Their race to doom is justified by the state violence that persecutes them, and the staging of their murder adds an emotional level to the classic morality (“crime does not pay”).

"Elements of the classic gangster film are linked with those of the family drama, the problematic social film and the western ballad."

The 1967 film Chicago Massacre sums up the trend of the 1960s to re-film old stories with a new freshness . He takes up the urban gangs, the syndicates of the 1930s, in order to examine them in a completely impartial, ironic and sometimes mocking manner.

The films Point Blank (1967) by director John Boorman , a parable on the “brave new world of high-tech gangsterism combined with respectability and anonymity”, and Bloody Mama (1970) by Roger Corman , broke new cinematic territory . reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde with the depiction of a robbing gangster family in the American Midwest .

New high point in the 1970s

Directors such as Francis Ford Coppola ushered in another high point of the subgenre . Martin Scorsese with Hexenkessel and Terence Young with The Valachi Papers and Cosa Nostra also contributed to this renaissance in the 1970s. In Coppola's Godfather saga (based on the novel by Mario Puzo ), consisting of The Godfather (1972) and the sequel The Godfather - Part II (1974), the myth of a powerful Italian-American criminal empire is built. In contrast to the tragic fate of loners like Al Capone, the power structure is not overthrown by the death or failure of individuals, because a successor is available for every “family member”. The title figure of the godfather, embodied by Marlon Brando , is the mastermind in a huge network that has its own laws and regulations that go beyond state power. The film thus completely questions the genre-typical, moral polarization of good and bad (normally state authority and criminals).

Recent developments

The further you advance in film history, the more difficult it becomes to identify clearly defined sub-genres or typical styles. The gangster film hardly exists in its original form, but numerous newer films are peppered with references to gangster films from earlier times.

In the 1980s, European influences on American films increased - directors Louis Malle produced further representatives of the genre with Atlantic City, USA (1980) and Sergio Leone with Once Upon a Time in America (1984), who stand out due to a rather un-American perspective.

Furthermore, the well-known remake Scarface was created in 1983 , which surpassed its role model in terms of excessive depictions of violence. Genre encroachments on, for example, action films ( Die Nackte Kanone , 1988) or comedy ( Die nackte Kanone , 1988) have proven to be very successful at the box office.

Perhaps the most important innovation in gangster films of the 1980s was the sudden appearance of several Hong Kong films such as B. Police Story (1985) or City Wolf (1986). Here the genre wanders from the usual closeness to reality into the fantastic and fairytale-like.

On the one hand, there was a trend towards action films in the 1990s. Heat (1995), a fatalistic picture of a gang of criminals, stands out in particular . Also in the body of the enemy (1997) an action-packed representatives of the genre, the many elements of the Hong Kong gangster film is contains.

On the other hand, many gangster films developed a penchant for biographical dramas. For example Bugsy (1991), who retells the life story of the pleasure-addicted gangster Bugsy Siegel . Casino (1995), a depiction of the machinations of the Chicago mafia, is set in the same Las Vegas milieu . Comparable films are Miller's Crossing (1990), a neo-classical picture of a 1930s gang, and Good Fellas - Three Decades in the Mafia (1990), in which an entire Mafia organization, for which crime only means business , is portrayed . What these films have in common is that the main characters, i.e. the criminals, are glorified and portrayed as “dreamers”.

Quentin Tarantino brought a breath of fresh air to the genre with his two films Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). His complex and referential works dismantle all genre conventions: In Pulp Fiction, for example, after his abuse, Butch examines a hammer, a baseball bat and a chainsaw one after the other - weapons common to the horror and action genre - before finally reaching for the "samurai sword of the Kurosawa films" .

Important recent gangster films include Fargo (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997), LA Confidential (1997), Heist - The Last Coup (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), Gangs of New York (2002) and Love Ranch (2010).

The gangster films from Hong Kong have gained a great aesthetic influence in recent years . Infernal Affairs by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak in particular was a great international success, which was so clear that Scorsese decided to do a US remake of Departed (2006).

List of major gangster films

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mason, pp. XIVf.
  2. ^ Ulrich Behrens: Review
  3. ↑ Leitch, p. 106
  4. ↑ Leitch, p. 107f.
  5. ↑ Hardy, p. 30
  6. ↑ Koebner, p. 236f.
  7. ↑ Hickethier, p. 73
  8. ↑ Koebner, p. 237
  9. ↑ Hardy, p. 99
  10. ↑ Koebner, p. 238
  11. ↑ Spex 09/2006, p. 63
  12. ↑ Hickethier, pp. 199f.
  13. ^ Johann N. Schmidt on Bonnie and Clyde
  14. ↑ Hardy, p. 259
  15. ↑ Hardy, p. 258
  16. ↑ Hardy, p. 382
  17. ↑ Hardy, p. 442
  18. ↑ Hickethier, p. 305