What is a Gangster Movie, Anyhow?

      
      I’ve been making some notes for a blog about “Gangster” movies, and I’m finding myself having trouble deciding exactly what that means. There are about 8 obvious choices of what I might call your “pure" gangster films, all made in the 1930s, starting with Little Ceasar (1931), and ending with The Roaring Twenties (1939). These deal most specifically with career criminals, their women, and friends and relatives who grieve for their lost souls and lives. They are played by such actors as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and George Raft or Paul Muni (Scarface, 1932). Their girlfriends include Ann Sheridan, Jean Harlow, Mac March, Claire Trevor and Priscilla Lane, to name a few. These are the perennial favorites that we who love this stuff watch time and time again. 

     But there are a myriad of other films from all eras, dealing with crime or criminal activity that, though they may not strictly meet the above, narrow definition of “Gangster” movies, nevertheless offer top-notch performances, story, action, suspense, fine directing, and all the other elements that make movies spellbinding and entertaining. We subdivide these into types or “genres” and label them according to theme, style, mood, context, or environment and call them names, like "mob, or mobster movies, prison movies, cop movies, or ‘film noir’ movies.”  They typically involve characters like bank robbers, safe crackers, con-men (or women), convicts, prison guards (or “screws”), crooked cops, corrupt officials, ex-cons, outlaws, punks, mugs, pickpockets, Mafia types, and other distasteful, but colorful and interesting participants. Whatever we may call these films, the good ones meet the definition of “Classics” as I understand the term; that is, that they are enduring films that we want to see over and over again. In the 1940s, the list of leading actors and actresses expands to include not only Cagney, Bogart, et al, but also names like Alan Ladd, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, John Garfield, Robert Young, Dick Powell, Victor Mature, Sterling Hayden, Ida Lupino, Audrey Totter, Veronica Lake, Virginia Mayo, Coleen Gray, Gloria Grahame, Jean Hagen and Ava Gardner. 

   The period is typified by great films such as High Sierra (1941), Maltese Falcon (1941); This Gun For Hire (1942); Murder, My Sweet (1944); The Killers (1946); Out of the Past (1947); Brute Force (1947); They Made Me a Fugitive (British,1947); The Set-Up (1949); and White Heat (1949). 
    The ‘40s also marked the advent of the concept of “Film Noir.” Many of the aforementioned films fit within that genre.

     In my next blog, I will explore the subject of  gangster classics in more detail,  examining and comparing individual films and how I feel about them, etc. In later blogs, I will look into the different decades and genres, from the 1950s, onward through the end of the 20^th century. Movies made since 1999 will have to wait their turn

That’s all  for now. Send in your comments and suggestions.