The Big Picture
The Public Enemy
shaped the gangster genre, inspiring modern classics like
The Godfather
and
The Sopranos
.
The film’s unflinching violence was a hallmark of pre-Code Hollywood, depicting crime with raw authenticity.
Martin Scorsese drew inspiration from
The Public Enemy
, cementing its legacy in cinema.
Nearly 100 years since its release, The Public Enemy’s influence reigns supreme over modern cinema. The classic Pre-Code gangster film was a groundbreaking advancement of the film medium that paved the way for its genre. Produced by Warner Bros. and starring the seminal Hollywood tough guy James Cagney, The Public Enemy is a totemic image of the gangster genre. Without it, modern audiences would have been deprived of titanic figures in the crime genre, including the films of Martin Scorsese and The Sopranos. The 1931 film, directed by old Hollywood staple, William A. Wellman, showed that crime wasn’t pretty, and any attempts to sanitize the criminal underworld are a disservice to reality and audience expectations. Critically lauded back then and today, it was also the first film to recognize that, deep down, despite our moral compass, we all romanticize gangsters.
The Public Enemy
An Irish-American street punk tries to make it big in the world of organized crime.
Release Date April 23, 1931
Director William A. Wellman
Cast James Cagney , Jean Harlow , Joan Blondell
Runtime 83
Main Genre Crime
Pre-Code Hollywood Depicted Sex and Violence on the Big Screen
The Public Enemy follows Tom Powers (Cagney), a low-level petty thief who rises to the top of the bootlegging underworld in Prohibition-era Chicago along with his partner-in-crime, Matt Doyle (Edward Woods). Tom’s brother, Mike (Donald Cook), is an upstanding citizen and WWI veteran who denounces his brother’s illicit lifestyle. Tom engages in two romantic relationships: one with Kitty (Mae Clarke), and the other with Gwen Allen (Jean Harlow). In a brisk 83 minutes, The Public Enemy distills the gangster genre with distinct clarity. Currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, the film’s pristine, tight-as-a-drum narrative mirrors the dynamic arc of an aspiring gangster. With just one break, Tom Powers is at the top. Instantaneously, within seemingly no time, Tom finds himself gunned down and in a hospital bed.
The film, with its unflinching violence and a narrative told through the eyes of an antihero, could only have existed during Hollywood’s pre-Code era. During this era, beginning with the advent of sound in film in the late 1920s and ending with the enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934, studio pictures routinely featured violence, mild profanity, sexual innuendos, promiscuity, and infidelity. While this period was best known for its female liberation, signified by sex-positive films such as Baby Face and Red-Headed Woman, Pre-Code Hollywood helped create the iconography of the classic gangster. Amid Prohibition and the reign of Al Capone, Hollywood capitalized on the notoriety by portraying gangsters as modern-day Western cowboys in films such as Little Caesar, Scarface, and The Public Enemy. The two faces of Pre-Code gangster films, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, were shockingly depicted as noble Robin Hood-like figures — something Hollywood would modify following the adoption of the Hays Code by insisting that crime never pays.
‘The Public Enemy’ Established the Modern Gangster Film
Cagney’s Capone-inspired Tom Powers is the quintessential Pre-Code gangster. He starts from nothing, but he quickly attains power and starts a turf war between a rival gang. He is charismatic, proud of his wealth, and defies authority. Every iconic mobster performance in its wake, including Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, and Al Pacino as Tony Montana in the Scarface remake, is indebted to Cagney, who balances the romanticism and sheer menace of organized crime. The verisimilitude of his performance complements Wellman’s hard-boiled direction. The Public Enemy doesn’t just restrict the violence between fellow mobsters, as perhaps the most iconic and studied scene in the film is in domestic life. Demanding a drink, Tom verbally attacks Kitty at the table. Suddenly, after she makes a dismissive remark, Tom gets up and stuffs a grapefruit in her face. The sequence, an unglamorous display of domestic violence, was believed to be improvised. In reality, the scene was coordinated by Cagney and Mae Clarke as a practical joke. Not in the original script, Wellman decided to leave the grapefruit scene in the final cut.
Rather than their depiction of sex and violence, pre-Code Hollywood films were more provocative for the ideas they expressed. In the early ’30s, it was radical to depict a woman with personal autonomy who worked her way up the corporate ladder while refusing to be monogamous. Running concurrently with the era’s feminist liberation is the depiction of gangsters as noble outlaws in the context of American ideology. The overarching dramatic theme of the film is the divide between Tom and his brother, Mike, who rejects his brother’s blood money. Before going off to fight in World War I, Mike tries to convince Tom to escape his life of crime, but by the time he returns home, Tom has evolved from a petty thief to a premier bootlegger. Rather than glorify Mike, the former Marine, the film identifies Tom as a noble go-getter. He’s not blinded by patriotism like his brother, but rather, he stays home to participate in American capitalism. The adage “crime doesn’t pay” is nowhere to be found in The Public Enemy, as Tom creates a prosperous criminal enterprise as a bootlegger. Similar to Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) speech about the thin line between politicians and gangsters in The Godfather, Tom argues that Mike, who killed Germans overseas in WWI, is a hypocrite, claiming he has no right to take the moral high ground over his gangster brother.
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Related One of Robert De Niro’s Greatest Gangster Films Is Also His Most Personal “You just have to accept people for what they are.”
How ‘The Public Enemy’ Inspired Martin Scorsese and ‘The Sopranos’
Image via Warner Bros.
Growing up in the neighborhood of Manhattan, Little Italy, the criminal underworld was part of the ecosystem surrounding Martin Scorsese, which gave his iconic gangster films Mean Streets and Goodfellas a personal touch. Scorsese, the ultimate cinephile, still used inspiration from classic gangster pictures when directing Goodfellas, now considered the definitive portrayal of the mafia. Citing it as the first gangster film he ever saw, Scorsese admired the “truthfulness” of The Public Enemy. He rejects the notion that Wellman’s direction is “crude,” and instead, celebrates its candor in expressing the plight of blue-collar Americans and how a desire to make ends meet through illicit means “goes out of control.” Goodfellas is celebrated for its ability to portray its subjects as likable people you’d want to hang around with. While many viewers implore Scorsese to explicitly condemn his characters’ actions, depicting violent criminals as affable people is a comment on the romanticism of organized crime in society. The Public Enemy highlights the luxuries of crime and an untapped insight into America, allowing the audience to become transfixed by the mob.
If Goodfellas defined organized crime on the big screen, The Sopranos redefined it for the 21st century on cable. Compared to the clear lineage from The Public Enemy to Scorsese’s film, the series envisioned a different kind of mobster, one whose neurosis was as much of a danger to him as rival gangsters or the FBI. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) with his depressive worldview and troubled upbringing at the hands of his domineering mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand), stripped away the fun and glamor of being a wise guy. Even with this postmodern take on the genre, The Sopranos paid tribute to the classics, and Tony himself was fond of the old films usually played on Turner Classic Movies. In the book, The Sopranos Sessions, showrunner David Chase cited The Public Enemy as an early influence.
In Season 3, Episode 2, “Proshai, Livushka,” Tony intermittently watches The Public Enemy on TV. The episode centers around the death of Livia and her wake. At the end of the episode, Tony watches the scene when Tom’s mother prepares for her son’s return home from the hospital. However, Tom never returns home, as he is killed by a rival gang. Tony is brought to tears at the sight of an affectionate mother caring for her gangster son, something he never experienced. At first, Tony watches the film with glee, as Cagney and classic gangster films evoke an era of “strong, silent types” that he frequently bemoans the loss of in contemporary society. After a night of grieving over his complicated mother, this film, a source of comfort food, takes a melancholic turn. Deep down, he’s not jealous that he couldn’t live in Cagney’s time that disregarded mental health and therapy. He’s jealous that he didn’t have a loving mother.
Don’t dismiss The Public Enemy due to its age. If you watch it, you’ll realize how much of the gangster genre cribs from the classic James Cagney film. You don’t have to be an aficionado of the genre to admire the William Wellman film, as its lurid energy and vibrant portrait of crime represent the power of Pre-Code cinema. The best gangster films and shows, The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos, present an intoxicating world of crime and mischief. Whether we want to admit it or not, The Public Enemy recognized that we all valorize the lives of gangsters.
The Public Enemy is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.
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