Jimmy Cagney- Top Of The World, Ma |
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If someone busts into your car and steals your stereo, then you're guaranteed, for the rest of your life, whenever you're telling the story, to use a certain term that Bruce Willis used to describe the thief. You know the one- it generally comes right after ‘Yippi ki yay.' The same thing applies if someone breaks into your house, if someone mugs you on the street, if someone rips you off. As a general rule, we're not impressed by people who steal from us- and hey, that's no surprise. After all, it makes life just that little bit harder. But on screen…now, that's a different story. On screen, gangsters are heroes more often than not. Good is bad, and bad is good.
The myth of the outlaw as the good guy is an ancient one- the legend of Robin Hood is a case in point. And certain real-life criminals, of course, cultivated a certain air of glamour. Think Billy the Kid, Will Bill Hickok, John Dillinger- thieves and gunmen, but the myths that have sprung up around them have turned them into heroes. And in the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition made alcohol as valuable as gold and serious money started to pour into the coffers of the bootleggers. Prestige followed. Dion O'Bannion, the king of Chicago's North Side, was presented with a gem-studded platinum watch in 1924 at a Democratic Party Convention (O'Bannion was gunned down by Al Capone's men months later). Capone himself was far larger than life, traveling in an armour-plated limousine, buying monogrammed shirts by the dozen, and eventually dying of syphilis. And just as with any good story, Hollywood was more than ready to adapt it to the big screen.
Back when movies were black and white and end credits went for less than half an hour, when a new gangster film was being cast, the producers asked one question- ‘Can we get Cagney?' In films like THE PUBLIC ENEMY and, later in WHITE HEAT, James Cagney defined the image of the gangster. He was tough, he was ruthless, and he was prepared to do anything for money. It was an angle that the public couldn't get enough of. The danger and the shine of the criminal lifestyle was present in Cagney's every move. His bravura performance (inspired by a hophead who had a residence on one of the corners in Cagney's neighbourhood) came in 1938's ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, as Rocky Sullivan, the criminal who serves as an inspiration for a gang of street urchins played by the Dead End Kids. Teamed up with Humphrey Bogart and Pat O'Brien, Cagney delivered a timeless portrayal as the man who has to choose between the high road and the low, and who pays the ultimate price for the life he has lived. The role earned him a Best Actor nomination at the Academy Awards, but Spencer Tracy took the honour.
But Cagney was just one man, and there was a whole underworld waiting to be unveiled. THE GODFATHER was just the film to do it. The ensemble cast of some of the greatest actors of the 20th century- Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall- were instrumental in creating not only a classic film, but cultural history. THE GODFATHER was a scorching testament to the unseen power and brutality of the Mafia. The scene where movie producer Jack Woltz finds the head of the racehorse Khartoum in his bed is instantly recognisable to anybody who knows anything about gangster movies. And while they might cut off horse's heads and generally make a living by murder, gambling and extortion, the Corleone Family are the good 
Joe Pesci- Say Hello To Our Little Friend |
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guys. These are the guys we want to see come the winners. From the opening scene of the wedding to the closing images of Michael Corleone's ascendance, we know that we want the Corleones to come out on top in the battle for supremacy between the Families of New York. Because in THE GODFATHER, the Corleones are the heroes- gangsters though they may be. This is the power of the movies in its most essential form; that even though we may know, in essence, that the people we watch are not good, honest men, we like them anyway.
The sheer money-making power of the underworld, and particularly the drug trade, was the engine that drove Al Pacino through SCARFACE. As anti-hero Tony Montana, Pacino went from a broke and broken-down Cuban exile to an international drug pin. Tony Montana is a gangster in the purest form; his emotions gradually murdered by his ever-growing need to make more and more money, simply for money's sake. Montana's only chance of salvation comes when he refuse to kill an enemy's wife and children, even though he knows that such an act may well cost him the world. Aside from the drugs and the guns, Montana's story is nothing more than a re-telling of the American Dream. The longevity of the character is indicated by the lines that will live forever in cinema history- ‘Say hello to my little friend', and ‘Fuck Casper Gomez, and fuck the fuckin' Diaz brothers! I'm gonna bury those cockroaches!' SCARFACE offers the viewer a chance to ride along with Montana and live vicariously through his actions as first, he gets the money, then he gets the power, then he gets the women.
Pacino returned to his classic gangster-role roots with CARLITO'S WAY, a movie soaked in old-school criminality and comprehensively detailing just how much like a quicksand pit the street can be. Carlito Brigante wants nothing more than to go straight and make some honest money, but his old lifestyle and the people around him, both old faces and new, have more of a hold on him than he could ever imagine. CARLITO'S WAY is not a film about grandeur, it doesn't make heroes of the gangsters. Instead, John Leguizamo's menacing wannabe kingpin, Benny Blanco from the Bronx, is set up in comparison to the trying-to-make-an-honest-buck Carlito. Benny is a new-school gangster, with no substance to him, no honour, but enough viciousness and firepower to make a play for the throne anyway. CARLITO'S WAY, perhaps more than any other, documents just how corrupting the touch of crime can be. No-one escapes the consequences of the whirlwind of events that unfold around Carlito.
Similar consequences abound in GOODFELLAS, the wide-ranging, true-life adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi's autobiographical account of growing up in the Mafia, ‘Wise Guy'. Ray Liotta delivered the performance of his career as Henry Hill, the man whose one and only ambition is to be a mobster- ‘At the age of twelve my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better then being President of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world.' That one statement, made by Pileggi himself, sums up the movie-going public's attitude towards gangster and mafioso. GOODFELLAS shows Liotta, Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci doing exactly what they want, living exactly the life they want to live, and making millions of dollars while they do it. But as in Pileggi's life, and in every gangster movie, what goes up must come down. While it's 
Gangsters- Just Plain Cooler Than You |
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not such a burden to bear as the psychopathic Pesci gets what is coming to him, Liotta and DeNiro, from the beginning to the end of the film, come across as friendly, personable fellows who just happen to operate outside of the law.
Another actor that makes it very easy to forget his character's profession by the end of a film is Johnny Depp as George Jung in BLOW. While there aren't many moviegoers alive who don't possess a real affection for Depp (at least half of the world's population, for instance) that doesn't mean that we can't despise a character's actions. But Depp's performance as the man who introduced cocaine to the USA is such that, as the film closes and we find that the life he has lead has left him bereft of family, love, and human contact, we feel sympathy for him. Totally undeserved sympathy, but sympathy nonetheless. While he was responsible for the destruction of untold numbers of lives and instrumental in raising the power of Colombian drug lords to incredible heights, we still see Jung as the hero, and Depp is able to solicit the same emotion as we would feel for any other lead.
The biggest thing to happen in movie portrayals of gangsters and criminals was, of course, the career of a certain young writer and director named Quentin Tarantino. When PULP FICTION and RESERVOIR DOGS exploded into popular culture, criminals became cooler than they had ever been before. The back-and-forth between Jules and Vincent in PULP FICTION about hamburgers in Amsterdam, the conversation at the start of RESERVOIR DOGS about the true meaning of Madonna's Like A Virgin, casual comments and tight camera techniques- Tarantino's work was unique and fresh and unexpected. Imitators came out of the woodwork and Tarantino became a cultural icon. Once again, criminals became our heroes. Tarantino turned petty crooks and gangsters into pop culture spewing, wisecracking antiheroes, worthier of admiration than disdain. Instead of being warnings of what happens when your life goes off the rails, Tarantino's characters are idealised, the epitomes of street cool.
And it wasn't long before art imitated art. UK gangster flick LOVE, HONOUR AND OBEY collected the cream of London's acting talent in Jonny Lee Miller, Jude Law, Ray Winstone and Sean Pertwee as ordinary, run-of the-mill criminals who like to keep things simply. But Miller's character, Jonny, (sharing, as all the characters in the movie do, the name of his real-life counterpart) wants more- he wants action, he wants excitement, he wants the life that he's seen in the movies. And so he takes it upon himself to spark conflict after conflict between his gang and a rival operation. Jonny is just as blinded by the glamorous ideals of the gangster lifestyle as everyone who has ever seen a movie about the criminal element and thought ‘Yeah, I could do that. And I think I'd be good at it.' Most people, of course, don't take it quite so far. Or have to pay the cost.
The big question is why? Maybe, as Tony Montana notes in a coked-out tirade at a restaurant, we need people like him to look down on. Maybe, being removed from the reality of it, we can say to ourselves that criminality is cool, that the slick portrayals of the movies are close to the truth. Maybe it's the money, maybe it's the power, maybe it's the women. Maybe it's the danger, or the risk, or the romance. I can't say for sure, but I can say this- in terms of box-office returns, crime pays.
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| Simon Smithson |
Simon was crushed when he found out that 'Ghostbuster' was not an actual vocation, and so went with the next best thing - writing columns for Internet movie sites. He's working on a proton pack of his own, but it's going to take some time.
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