Toward the 21st Century

Abstract

Abstract This would be the right place and moment to say there isn’t much difference between our latest underworld films and those powerful early talkies that elicited such censorious tremors of apprehension throughout a concerned, law-abiding citizenry, at the same time thrilling them with bold gestures of social defiance and raking in big dough during hard times. The conditions now are different, and we’ve seen many a criminal type come, momentarily hold sway, and then be given the choice of a ticket out of town or a bullet in the head. Films have fictionally documented, investigated, and taken positions on these real-life turnovers and their surrounding political contexts. Yet the kinds of stories they typically tell tend to simplify often messy issues by a fierce attention to emotions and by adhering to the clean, noble, time-tested patterns and structures of literary forms—tragedy, comedy, satire, romance—but adding their own appropriate variations and, it must be said, exercising all manner of expressive license. What works (i.e., makes money) gets repeated. The gangster, a fascinating public figure, was the subject of more than fifty films from 1930 to 1932, which suggested that he was plenty fascinating on the screen too, hence this period of his greatest popularity. He never had it so good again, but he has continued to sell tickets to this day—has, in fact, never been off the screen since his spectacular debut—and I’d guess that he makes some kind of appearance in probably 80 percent of American films. When he’s not up front, he’s lurking somewhere, and films will acknowledge his criminal and sinister presence within both law-breaking and law-abiding communities.