Gangster, Businessmen and the American Dream - Movie Review Example

Gangster, Businessmen and the American Dream If one goes to the Internet Movie Database site on the internet (IMDB.com) and follows the link to view the top 250 films as rated by members of the site-anyone can become a member-one may at first be struck by how low the film usually ranked by film critics and directors as the greatest film ever made is ranked. Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane does not even rank in the top twenty, though just barely. It is ranked number 21, below such questionably higher-ranked films as all three of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) entries, 12 Angry Men and The Shawshank Redemption. The next most striking thing about the films that have made the top twenty list are the plethora of films either directly or tangentially about criminals. Indeed, of the top twenty rated films, only Dr. Strangelove and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can be said to not feature a criminal in his traditional role, though even in the latter film the lead character McMurphy is only sent to the mental hospital to keep from going to jail. Disregarding characters such as Darth Vader, the villains featured in the LOTR trilogy, Nazis and the man on trial in 12 Angry Men, nine of the top twenty rated films feature criminals as characters who are vital to the plot. And of those nine, five can be accurately be considered to belong the gangster genre with at least two others that could be strongly argued as featuring gangsters. As one makes his way down through the rest of the top 250 rated films, it quickly becomes obvious that the gangster genre is represented far more than any other genre. And what is the top rated film of all time The Godfather. The Godfather, Part II is rated number 3. Clearly, gangsters (or mobsters or whatever other term one may prefer) touch a nerve with filmgoers in a way that no other single group of individuals ever has; gangster films became a mainstay of Hollywood with the advent of talkies and their popularity has never waned since, unlike the genre's closest rival, the western. Although there are a multitude of reasons why the gangster genre has remained unfailingly popular despite wholesale changes in society since its inception, and though there are just as many reasons why the western has not sustained its popularity, one cannot overlook the importance of how free market ideology is so often perfectly mirrored in the typical tale of the rise and fall of a gangster. From Tony Camonte in the original Scarface to Henry Hill in Goodfellas, these stories more accurately reflect the societal insistence on achieving the so-called American Dream of attaining wealth through nothing more than simple ambition than the western or, indeed, any other genre. In keeping with the spirit of instilling a prevailing ideology through media, however, these films also serve as cautionary tales meant to show what happens when ambition leads to all-out criminal behavior. Society's fear that gangsters were being glorified and held up as heroes has manifested itself since the earliest classics of the genre, and while there has never been any direct evidence that these fears have been spurred because the story of a successful gangster so effectively mirrors the rise of successful mainstream businessmen, there can be little doubt that the similarity between the achievement of the American Dream by such seemingly disparate individuals as Al Capone and Cornelius Vanderbilt must surely be unnerving to those wishing to preserve the illusion that American businessmen were and are all as pure as the driven snow. Capone is an icon, perhaps the icon, of real life gangsters, and his story has been told either semi-factually, fictionally or semi-fictionally dozens of times, most notably in the original Scarface and the more recent The Untouchables. Although the exact details of Capone's crimes and misdemeanors are a mystery to most of those who are familiar with his name, almost everyone instantly recognizes him as one of America's all-time great criminal characters. Judging by the films made about him and the myths instilled by those films, we are probably right in assuming that Capone engaged in murderous activities himself as well as ordering his lieutenants. We are probably fully within our rights to expect that he engaged in graft, that he was corrupt, that he mistreated those who worked for him. We are probably right on target in assigning the term "bad guy" to Al Capone. On the other hand, Cornelius Vanderbilt is held up as an icon of all that is right about living the American Dream; in achieving untold wealth, Vanderbilt was also instrumental in the economic growth of the United States. The Commodore has a college in Tennessee named after him and was once one of the richest men in the world. He certainly would be included in any argument over who is the icon of the mainstream American business success story. Although his name is certainly less well known than that of Capone, he can rest easily knowing it is far more admired and distinguished. But do the stories of Capone's and Vanderbilt's successes really differ more than they are similar Capone was undoubtedly a member of organized crime and undoubtedly has much blood on his hands. But what of Vanderbilt Reppetto (2004) claims that Vanderbilt "used armies of gunmen to obtain concessions for his shipping company from Central American governments. Later he used the same tactics to gain control of American railroads" (158). The language used in that last sentence sounds quite similar to the jargon used in countless gangster films in which much blood was shed in order to gain control of the west side, or the drug action, or prostitution. Cementing the connection even further Reppetto (2004) goes on to write that infamous mobster Meyer Lansky would turn Vanderbilt from gangster simile to a gangster metaphor by telling his underlings, "Look at the Astors and the Vanderbilts, all those big society people. They were the worst thieves-and now look at them. It's just a matter of time" (158). Lansky was promising respectability for his fellow gangsters at some point in the future, but he was either hopelessly optimistic or unbelievably nave. Or perhaps both. Exciting movies have been made and continue to be made about men like Lansky and while few movies are produced about men like Vanderbilt. The reason for that may be that men like Vanderbilt prefer that movies get made about men like Lansky and Capone. The mainstream American Dream continues, orchestrated by those at the top, and from the beginning efforts were enforced to show that low-level criminal activity differs from high level criminal activity in two ways: getting caught and getting punished. Few would argue that contemporary gangsters are regarded more as the heroes of their particular fictions than gangsters in the earliest talkies. Although the ending is typically violent death for today's gangsters, before they meet that end they are shown as attractive, successful and, well, cool. In fact, however, many of those early gangsters started out as much more valorized figures than they eventually became. As Munby (1999) writes, the release of Howard Hawks' Scarface was "delayed until cuts and additions had been made to secure that the film incorporated sufficient more compensation for its vice" (19). Even after the cuts, Paul Muni's characterization of Tony Camonte in that film is rife with the kind of excitement and delirious invocation of vicarious pleasure that one gets from watching such more obvious heroic gangster figures as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather or even Clyde Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde. It is perhaps no coincidence that all three of those characters die in a flurry of gunshots, leaving them with bullet-riddled corpses no longer capable of enjoying the fruits of their labors. In contrast, very few American CEOs end their lives resembling Swiss cheese lying on the asphalt at a tollbooth or on the side of a Midwestern road. The lesson is clear: Yes, we recognize there are some very slight similarities between gangsters and the world of big business, but in the world of big business people die of natural causes, not execution style slayings. In other words, there is no comparison. Lansky, still in his grave, continues his vigil for respectability. Even more explicit in delineating an ideological distancing of mainstream pursuit of free market success from gangsterism is the disclaimer found before the opening of another classic mobster movie, Public Enemy. Munby (1999) accurately describes this disclaimer as being "couched in the rhetoric of the officiating culture" (51). According to Munby, the disclaimer explicitly states that the intention of the film is to "depict an environment,' not to glorify the gangster'" (51). Less explicitly, then, the intention was to even further distance the gangster from the mainstream. The film goes so far in this distancing that it even literally places the gangster's story taking place "on the other side of the tracks." While the American Dream rests fully upon the proposition that nobody in America is denied by class from becoming a success, the literal crossing of the camera across railroad tracks to tell the story hints at the distinction between honest accumulation of wealth through hard work and dishonest accumulation through crime. Further cementing the James Cagney character's Otherness: his designation as a Public Enemy, his unpatriotic derision of enlisting to fight for America in WWI, his contempt for his brother's educational ambitions. Cagney's character Tommy is directly lined up in opposition to everything that is admirable about America. Tommy is clearly meant to be seen as one of the problems of American society: Tommy rejects all aspects of the American Dream, seeing through it as a hollow lie. Yes, Tommy does come from the wrong side of the tracks and, though young and uneducated, he already has the savvy to understand that all the patriotism, education and hard work in the world won't earn him entry into respectable society with its mansions, penthouses and beautiful women. Less nave than Meyer Lansky and completely lacking in any optimism, Tommy Powers is the ideal subject for his particularly story. The story of the public enemy isn't really being told only to depict an environment, but rather to provide a valuable insight: Those who refuse to acquiesce to all aspects of the American ideology will find themselves on the road to ruin and, worse, not even the police can save them. The tough, gritty and admirable performances of actors like Cagney, Muni and Edgar G. Robinson were one thing that could not be controlled through the use of disclaimers or judicious editing, and their kinetic acting styles may have done much to undermine the good intentions of those disclaimers and edits. Something else needed to be done to ensure that an American public becoming increasingly and dangerously enthralled by the exploits of real-life gangsters like Capone, Bonnie & Clyde, and John Dillinger was suitably restrained within the darkened movie palaces of the 30s. Although gangster movies were exciting enough by themselves to virtually assure the genre would have been a success regardless, it certainly did not hurt that their introduction coincided with the Great Depression and the emergence of legendary gangsters and bank robbers that the media turned into modern day folk heroes ala Robin Hood. Although it is questionable whether Ma Barker or Machine Gun Kelly ever actually gave money to the poor, there is no question that in the much of the public's mind the money they were stealing from banks definitely belonged to the rich. After all, the poor had no money in the banks during the Depression. At least, that's how it seemed. Dillinger especially, even more so than Capone, captured a hold on the public's fascination. Dillinger's exploits and personality so captured the public's fancy that shortly after his violent shooting death outside a cinema-ironically after watching a film about gangsters-Will Hays, the head of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, instituted a ban on gangster films. Munby (1999) writes that "the moratorium was motivated ostensibly by the concurrent media fascination surrounding" Dillinger's death and the fear that gangster films featuring lively characterizations of criminals would fuel the romanticisation of mobsters. That may perhaps be true; more likely was the concern that the genuinely exciting characters being portrayed in gangster films had engendered within the members of certain American subcultures a willingness to take a chance on an early and violent death in exchange for an authentic possibility of tasting the sweet wine of American success. The Great Depression of the 1930s didn't just help cement the popularity of the gangster genre, it also revealed to many that soft underbelly of the American Dream that Tom Powers saw through in Public Enemy. If it was difficult for the son of a poor kid-especially an inner city son of a European immigrant-to work his way up the ladder to success during the roaring twenties, then it was all but impossible to do by the time Dillinger went on his ill-fated date with the Lady in Red. Powers turned his back on all the lessons being force-fed him about making it in America and ended up dead. But at least he had a good time before then. All that America had to offer during the Depression was hope; crime provided food. Certainly, the moratorium and crackdown was intended to halt the romantic view of mobsters built up by the combination of dashing real-life figures and even more exhilarating big-screen counterparts, but was Cagney's performance in Public Enemy so overwhelming that it undercut the message of the film Apparently so, because as part of the moratorium both that movie and Little Caesar were banned from public view (Munby 1999). In fact, neither film would be exhibited again until the 1950s. And while one may have little trouble making the argument that Cagney's Tom Powers was the stuff of emulation, Robinson's Rico Bandello poses a problem. Cagney is good-looking, if in a tough kind of way; Robinson was never a matinee idol. Tom Powers is a rebel whose insistence on going his own way has undeniably admirable qualities; Rico Bandello is a simple thug. The public enemy beds Mae Clark and Jean Harlow; Little Caesar seems vaguely homosexual. Both films were banned under the moratorium with the implicit reasoning that they romanticised the gangster. While both actors certainly burn indelibly on the screen, only Cagney succeeds in making the life of gangster seem romantic. To make a modern comparison, Cagney's Tom Powers is a romantic vision of a gangster like Brando's Vito Corleone, while Robinson's Rico Bandello is a more realistic vision of a gangster along the lines of Ray Liotta's Henry Hill. The difference After watching Public Enemy or The Godfather it would not be surprising to walk out of the theater wanting to be like them; after watching Little Caesar or Goodfellas it would be difficult to justify wanting to live those lives. For the remainder of the Depression, the FBI would continue its crackdown on the real gangsters while all romantic and exciting portrayals of gangsters by big stars on the silver screen practically disappeared. Censorship is rarely about protection of society and almost always about the protection of those in power; attempts to censor the romanticisation of the figure of the gangster had far less to do with saving the bodies and minds of impressionable youths with little hope for a happy future in the dark days of the depression and much to do with keeping that money safely in the bank that the rich had deposited. Never mind that the reason so many people had no money to keep in a bank in the first place was because corporate criminals were had robbed them blind just a few years earlier. The attempt to halt criminal activity both in real life and on the silver screen had just as much to do with keeping alive the burning embers of belief in the American Dream as protecting the innocent. While gangster movies would continue to be made, including genuine classics such as The Roaring Twenties and White Heat, most were B-movies devoid of big name stars and critical acceptance. The commercial popularity of the genre never declined, however the representations certainly underwent a transformation. Cagney's rebellious Tom Powers becomes the blubbering coward Rocky Sullivan, a puppet used to teach the kids who idolize him just how unromantic a gangster really is. Even worse, later on he becomes the screen's second most famous mama's boy Cody Jarrett. (Norman Bates, naturally, being the most famous). With the victory of the American Way following World War II, the very idea of an unpatriotic Tom Powers inspiring moviegoers seemed impossible. By the 50's the gangster seemed to be effectively distanced from the mainstream American businessman. Indeed, his marginalization was so complete that by the end of the decade one the genre's most recognizable and long-lasting stars, George Raft, was parodying his iconic image of the coin-flipping hood in the comedy Some Like It Hot. A funny thing happened on the way to completely marginalising the gangster as a perfect representative of free market pursuit of the capitalist ideal, however. The demonisation of communists continued unabated from the 50s through the 80s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The gangster was never fully freed from his romantic undertones, but in 1967 he made a striking return to his earlier form; a return that seems to be permanent. Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde was deliriously pro-gangster, featuring two very attractive young actors as the notorious bank robbers. There is no doubting who the heroes of this film are. In fact, they are so heroic that they can't even be accurately termed anti-heroes. Historical accuracy obviously was not the intent of the filmmakers. As Prince (2000) writes, Arthur Penn and producer/star Warren Beatty both rejected "the studio's suggestion that they film the movie in black and white and aim for historical accuracy" (130). The stated intent of the filmmakers was instead to tell a story of anti-establishment heroes who bucked the system instead of knuckling under it. In fact, however, one can read the story of Bonnie & Clyde as a gleeful acceptance of the establishment. If the gangster is no different from the corporate criminals from whom they are robbing-which is their argument-then bank robbers aren't bucking the system at all; rather they are just engaging the system differently. While the arrival of Bonnie & Clyde coincided with the tremendous social upheaval taking place in America and the rest of the world in sixties, in retrospect the message is decidedly conservative. What do Bonnie and Clyde want Money. Why To better a enjoy life. Change the question to what is the American Dream and the answers remain the same. Bonnie & Clyde may share their wealth is a more socially conscious way, but isn't that merely a reflection of charitable and philanthropic activities of people like Cornelius Vanderbilt Indeed, the reflection of the gangster to the successful mainstream American businessman becomes much easier to see in the gangster films following Bonnie & Clyde. And if that movie reintroduced the romantic vision of gangsters, The Godfather forever cemented it. Why would a movie about cutthroat criminals that features horrifically violent murder after horrifically violent murder top the list of most highly rated movies of all time A closer look at that list of the twenty favorite films of all times reveals something else that is interesting. While the list is dominated by films populated by criminals and other very bad guys, it is also dominated by films with unambiguous endings in which the good guys triumph. From Schindler's List, two Star Wars movies, the LOTR trilogy, and Raiders of the Lost Ark to The Seven Samurai, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Rear Window the overwhelming majority feature the triumph of good over evil; of good guys over the bad. And yet the favorite movie of those voting features a cold-blooded killer getting away with it. Not only getting away with it, but consolidating his power and growing stronger. The only other movie in the top twenty that features anywhere near as upbeat an ending for a bad guy is The Usual Suspects and it is way down at number 17. The Godfather, more than any other gangster film ever made, portrays its gangsters in not only a positive light, but also a light that makes a clear connection between criminal activity and the business world. Organized crime is presented as nothing so much as a business, a business subject to profit and loss and risk and calculation. Goodfellas also takes this tack, showing the blue-collar day-to-day workings of this business known as organized crime, but its gangsters are nowhere near as romantic and subject to emulation as the members of the Corleone family. In the original film, only Sonny dies violently and his murder is staged so dramatically that even dying like him seems pretty romantic. Michael gets to bed down two attractive women and whack all his enemies. Heck, Vito Corleone even gets to die of natural causes, something almost unheard-of in the annals of both real and movie gangsters! What's not to like about being a gangster in this story And along the way the viewer is treated to a decided capitalistic ideology behind this whole business of crime. At long last the filmmakers had the freedom from censorship to present a vision of the gangster that explicitly implied a connection between the criminal route to success and the mainstream route. As Warshow (1954) writes the gangster movie "is a story of enterprise and success ending in precipitate failure" (654). Well, the classic gangster story, anyway. With the fall of the Hays Code in the 60s and the rise of cynicism following Vietnam and Watergate, the truth could finally be told. The modern gangster story has consistently allowed happier endings for its gangsters. And if they aren't necessarily happy endings as experienced by Michael Corleone and Keyser Soze, then at least they don't always die in the end. The gangster is no longer reduced to being the major player in cautionary tales about how not to pursue the American Dream. The gangster has become firmly located within the process. The savings & loan scandal of the 80's and corporate scandals of recent years such as the collapse of Enron have proven that there is a very thin line between the tactics of gangsters and those who have achieved the American dream through the accepted means. Even the generally accepted caveat that murder separates gangsters from mainstream businessmen has become open to interpretation. Warshow (1954) further singles out the gangster when he writes that "he is without culture without manners, without leisure, or at any rate his leisure is likely to be spent in debauchery so compulsively aggressive as to seem only another aspect of his work'" (654). Anyone who has watched Vito Corleone and later Michael interact with people, or anyone who has watched the gangsters in Pulp Fiction interact with each other might question that statement. Anyone who has ever read of the million dollar birthday parties thrown by CEOs, or who has read of the sexual shenanigans of certain respected businessmen might well question Warshow as well. Indeed, each passing year seems to further erode all lines of bifurcation between criminals and big businessmen. When the remake of Scarface first came out, much was made of Tony Montana's diving into a mound of cocaine. Since then, the image has lost much of its power to shock as details of drug abuse by high powered executives throwing lavish cocaine parties came to light. Perhaps Warshow (1954) is most off base when he writes that "the gangster is the no' to that great American yes' which is stamped so big over our official culture and yet has so little to do with the way we really feel about our lives" (655). What makes the gangster the perfect metaphor for those wishing to achieve the American Dream Why is the gangster not outside the mainstream of the American success story It is not because gangsters break the law just like big business; it is not because organized crime has a hierarchy similar to corporations. What makes the gangster so uniquely fitted as the truest movie icon representing America is that the gangster pursues exactly the same thing as the businessman, as the owner, as the lowest level employee: the ability to buy happiness. Rico Bandello, Tom Powers, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Al Capone, Vito Corleone, Kenneth Lay, Henry Hill and every other film gangster and real gangster, and every other big business owner all engaged in their respective business practices not to change the world, or to help people better their lives, though certainly that may have been by-product. No, gangsters real and fictional and big businessmen real and fictional all go about their business because it makes them money which they can then use to buy things with the intent of extending their happiness. The American Dream is expressed in the acquisition not of wealth, but of things. Like the bumper sticker says "He who dies with the most toys wins." Gangsters on film typically die dramatically and with great excitement and almost always before they accumulate the most toys. Big businessmen in real life usually die quietly and without much fanfare. And still struggling mightily to accumulate more toys. Works Cited Internet Movie Database Top 250 List. http://www.imdb.com/chart/top. Retrieved January 7, 2006. Munby, J. (1999). Public Enemies, Public Heroes. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Prince, S. (2000). "The Hemorrhaging of American Cinema: Bonnie & Clyde's Legacy of Cinematic Violence." Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. Reppetto, T. (2004). American Mafia. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Warshow, R. (1954). "Movie Chronicle: The Westerner." Braudy and Cohen (Eds.) Film Theory and Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More