1/18/2024 0 Comments Mafia moviesDe Niro is in his prime, gangster film royalty as the veteran of The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), Mean Streets (1973), and The Godfather, Part II. A pairing as exciting as Bogart and Cagney. Based on the book The Hoods (1952) by Hershel “Noodles” Goldberg under the alias Harry Grey, the film stars Robert De Niro as David “Noodles” Aaronson and James Woods as Maximilian “Max” Bercovicz. Sergio Leone turned down a chance to direct The Godfather to make an unflinching look at the depths of criminal heights. “He used to be a big shot,” some off-key canary says. His stumble down the church steps is iconic. Cagney’s rise up the gangster ladder is a tour de force. When a club snubs her, Eddie buys the joint. Lloyd makes a play for Eddie’s sweetheart, Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane). George betrays his boss Nick Brown over spaghetti no less. He gets dipped in Prohibition at a speakeasy headlined by Panama Smith (Gladys George), and turns into headline-making bootlegger.Įddie partners up with his two foxhole buddies, Jeffrey Lynne’s young lawyer Lloyd Hart and Humphrey Bogart’s George Hally. James Cagney’s Eddie Bartlett comes back from WWI to grim prospects at home. Both are unrelenting romances with gangsters and the jazz age. Raoul Walsh’s The Roaring Twenties should be seen on a double bill with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Cotton Club (1984). “I want my environment to be a product of me.” With that he lays out the motivations of the legendary Boston crime head Whitey Bulger, at large and unscathed for years when the film was made. “I don’t want to be a product of my environment,” Jack Nicholson’s Irish mob boss and turnaround informant Frank Costello declares. The film should have ended with Terry face down on the dock. Friendly has him hung on a hook, and kicks the shit out of the former boxer too. But Terry dances with cops and his brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) pays the price. It’s a lofty position for the conscious-plagued mug who fingered a squealer to the mob. The mobbed-up union president gives the future Godfather actor a no-work job. Terry was a boxer who took a dive for Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Marlon Brando’s Terry Molloy is a cautionary tale, and not just because he got a one-way ticket to Palookaville. As great as this film is, in mob circles it’s still the story of a rat. It is also an allegory for director Elia Kazan’s compliance with Hollywood commie hunters. On the Waterfront is a gritty portrait of dockworkers under the thumb of gangsters. Here are 15 organized crime films which each made most-wanted lists that budding gangsters need to see. Now, 100 years after that film is set, directors are still aiming their cameras at the public enemies, regardless of what number they come in on Interpol’s watch list. That’s how James Cagney’s Eddie Bartlett went out in The Roaring Twenties (1939). They always rise up, even if they are splattered across the ornate fountains of their gangland mansions in the last frame, like Al Pacino’s Tony Montana in Brian DePalma’s Scarface(1983), or rolling down the steps of a church, dead from a hail of bullets. “Gone are the days of the gangsters,” audiences heard for years, usually in movies about mobsters. There is more intrigue, suspense, violence, mayhem, and madness to be found in the criminal element than any other genre. “But only in the movies.” When a good mob movie is on the table, it is an offer no filmmaker can refuse. Robinson, who played Rico Bandello in the seminal gangster film Little Caesar (1931), is famous for saying. Organized crime holds the upper tier of the international cinematic commission.
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