tiré de l'incontournable ouvrage Le
crime à l'écran, une histoire de l'Amérique par M. Michel Ciment, Editions Gallimard,
collection Découvertes, à lire absolument.
Agro-cynophiles
: required viewing
---QUID DES FILMS AU PROGRAMME ?
Les visionner en fac?
No way & why not : opinion
sur rue
> Les cours ont repris à Rennes
avec de très bon profs de
traduction ainsi que de très intéressants cours sur Shakespeare et
Wharton.
En ce qui concerne la civi, le prof de Crime est plutôt convaincant même
si on peut regretter son refus de nous faire visionner les films au programme "pour
des problèmes de droits d'auteur" mais certains étudiants sont
en train d'étudier un moyen pour organiser des séances ciné
collectives (donc pas de problème entre étudiants!).
> He doesn't have the right
to show them to you (perhaps short
extracts... although that is debatable) but you have the right to invite friends
into your "cadre familial"...
Paradoxical, innit!
> t'is!
ce n'est pas une situation claire.
On a bien le droit d'utiliser les
textes papier - les livres, pour l'étude des oeuvres au programme, non?
> English departments
aren't really equipped
to handle the logistics of film study. They don't
know how to organize it. Given their limited means, it seems to me that we can't
expect anything more.
> The point is,
that if you want to see em,
you gotta *pay*! There is an organisation in France
from whom you can purchase screening rights - and I agree it would be entirely logical
for these teachers doing Agreg preparation to have contacted ADAV and purchased with
his "credits pédagogiques" these rights for at least half a dozen
films.
ADAV
Ateliers Diffusion Audio Visuelle
41 rue des Envierges
75020 PARIS
tel. :01 43 49 10 02
fax: 01 43 49 25 70
They often update their catalogue with
a gazette referencing all the films they recently "bought" rights of diffusion
(particularly in schools).
> Their products are a little expensive,
but then again no problem whatsoever
with copyright law.
I bought a few films there for my classes in Cinema and English, and this year a
group of pupils initiated a ciné-club which is totally legal. Anybody wants
to join the club ?
> On
the other side of the coin,
the Crime teachers have the same problem we have
- a very limited envelope of hours to study the Agreg with his students.
If he throws away 2 hours per film times say half a dozen films, what's he going
to have left?
> Le Ministère a obtenu
la libération des droits
pour BBC World et Prime. Nous sommes autorisés à enregistrer et diffuser
en classe tout ce qui passe sur ces chaines - les détails sont ici,
grâce à Christine Reymond.
> Si on décide d'organiser l'étude en Fac d'oeuvres filmées,
comment ne pas pouvoir les y visionner?
Les conditions préalables devraient être réunies, sinon c'est
une aberration... - "regardez chez vous en catimini, on en parlera ouvertement
en cours" ?
> Pour l'utilisation des vidéos en classe à priori c'est
3 minutes... ¡tres! voir ici.
> Ce serait de bon crime
de poser la question, au colloque
de Cachan par exemple, du visionnage en fac des films au programme, et même
de s'activer pour l'obtenir...
votre opinion
Filmographie, dix titres.
Le Jury attendrait des candidats qu'ils connaissent bien 4 ou 5
de cette liste de 10.
Inutile de préparer un Doctorat d'Etat sur la question !
- Public Enemy (1931)
- Scarface (1932)de Hawks
- G Men (1935)
- Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
de Curtis
- The Rolling Twenties (1939)
- The Killers
(1936) de Siodmack
- Key Largo (1948) de Huston
- The Asphalt Jungle (1950) de Huston
- The Enforcer (1951)
- The Big Heat (1953) de Lang
Film Noir a compilation of 20 great titles - par Vicente N. Moreno,
futur cinéaste, fan de cinema.
The problem of film noir
Interesting site for US civi ,the "odur"
site was already a great Manifest Destiny resource
last year and the film noir essay is quite a good introduction, especially about
the aesthetic
side of the problem and the characterization of stereotypes (femme fatale and so
on ) or should
we say prototypes (see the Cachan
colloquium).
"Film Noir" is a french label on an american film phenomenon.
In postwar France they got the opportunity to watch a large amount of american movies
made in the forties, at the same time, and thus it became easier for them to discover
similarities among these pictures.
The french noticed the divergence between this film load and pre-war american movies
and the connection between these films and the literature called roman noir.
This was dark literature, and film noir means black film.
Film
Noir Aesthetics
A fatalistic and hopeless mood, a complex, often
disjuncted and fragmented narration, an unconventional use of the time notion ...
"One of the techniques used was the low-key lighting which causes the effect
of obscuring the action, and deglamourizing the star so that the composition becomes
more important than the actor..."
Film
Noir
historical background
The
origins of film noir
The noirs were inspired both by crime novels
and hard-boiled fiction, the film traditions of German expressionistic expressionism
of the twenties and French poetic realism of the thirties, marked by distortions
and exaggerations, the american gangster movies. All have in common the description
of a dark and fatalistic image of the world. The émigrés took jobs
in the american movie industry as technicians and directors and made a contribution
to the society and heritage that film noir emerged from...
Film
noir SA- the connection
between film noir and the contemporary American culture.
Extrait (intro): The US emerged
from WWII drastically different from when they entered. The US society had changed
in every aspect, even the American ideology differed from earlier ages.
These changes had cultural impact, and in the middle of these confused times there
occurred something previously unseen in the magical world of celluloid.
The 40's gave birth to the American phenomenon of film noir, a film "style"
that had a continued existence during the two first decades of the postwar era...
Sur
Al Capone
Gangster filmography
> incontournable.
---
PUBLIC ENEMY
Nominé à l'Oscar
1931 du meilleur scénario ."De James Cagney, on garde l'image mythique
du truand colérique et enfantin, immortalisé dans "L'ennemi public",
où il écrase un demi-pamplemousse contre le visage de sa maîtresse..."
- non mais (Canal Satellite n° 49 )
Sur Ciné Classics (channel 63) lundi 11 Juin à 11h55, mardi
12 à 22h00, mercredi 13 à 10h40, jeudi 14 à 14h40, vendredi
15 à 18h40, samedi 16 à 9h40, dimanche 17 à 20h30. Durée
: 80mn.
Les collègues de la liste de discussion agreg-anglais ont parfois de bonnes
petites idées sur la manière de se procurer les films.... J.
liste
de discussion agreg-anglais
Site sur Public Enemy
: pour tout savoir avant ou
après le film (ou pendant, pour les experts).
--
-SCARFACE
blackstar.co.uk : handy for those of you wishing or needing
to purchase organized crime stuff. Belfast based, they offer quality service. A look
for keywords like crime and gangster brings up a £5.29 + £1.70 postage
(Pacino version same price on VHS etc). Click on old scarface's nose for a direct
link to details of this required viewing. (info Darrengby).
choicesdirect.co.uk
: Scarface (1932) y est
vendu à £5.09 port compris puisque sur ce site les prix indiqués
sont "TTC monde entier" (info Denis the World Rover).
COMPLETE
FILM LISTINGS
Film noir reached its peak and Golden Age
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
However, film noir has not been exclusively confined to that particular time period
or era, and has re-occurred in cyclical form in other years.
Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the
post-war ambience of anxiety and suspicion. Film noir is a distinct branch of the
crime/gangster sagas from the 1930s (i.e., Little Caesar (1930),
Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface
(1932)), but different in tone and characterization.
The crime element in film noir is a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a
strong undercurrent of moral conflict. Strictly speaking however, film noir is not
a genre, but rather the mood or tone of a film.
More
on this.
---ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938)
Director : Michael CURTIZ
Actors : James CAGNEY, Humphrey BOGART, Pat O'BRIEN, Ann SHERIDAN.
Summary :
Rocky SULLIVAN (J.Cagney) and Jerry CONNOLLY (Pat
O'Brien) are slum kids who live in the streets robbing to ensure their subsistence.
One day they are caught trying to rob fountain pens in a wagon.
As they run away from the police officer, Rocky is stopped whereas Jerry escapes.
As the film unfolds, Rocky is shown going from jail to jail falling increasingly
into the world of crime. On the other hand Jerry has become a priest.
In prison, Rocky has made a deal with his attorney, Frazier (H. Bogart) who is supposed
to keep his money when Rocky gets out of prison.
But Frazier fails to keep his promise and finds Rocky on his way to (nasty) business.
Rocky succeeds in crime by stealing from Frazier and Keefer who are influent in the
city and corrupted.
Jerry, who strives to look after a gang of teens for whom Rocky appear as a hero,
tries to persuade Rocky to leave crime business and stand with him against corruption.
But Rocky only dreams of power and glory and Jerry turns up to be his enemy, and
multiplies speeches and talks through the media (newspapers, radio).
In a final fight against Frazier and Keefer, Rocky is arrested and sentenced to death.
Jerry's last request as he visits him is to make known that he has died as a yellow
(a coward) so that the kids stop admiring him as a hero.
He promises he will not die as a yellow but does at the last moment and that brings
him a kind of redemption.
Setting & analysis :
USA in the 1930s. Slums resembling Italian rear
courtyards with hanging clothes.
Post-depression period. A contrast is clearly drawn between the streets, the slums
and Keefer's night club.
Places: Streets => church => jail => nightclub.
The fence over which Jerry can jump as opposed to Rocky who runs less fast- appears
as a symbol, a boundary between two worlds.
Jerry , though from the same environment as Rocky, manages to escape from crime
but Rocky is stuck to it.
Laurie Martin (a girl of the same neighbourhood and age as Rocky and Jerry, with
whom Rocky is awkwardly in love) sums up that idea that society corrupts man : Rocky
was made a criminal.
Rocky is doomed to be a gangster To this idea of a society corrupting can be added
those of fate and luck.
The basket match of the kids can be regarded as a microcosm of society with its foul
and fights.
The press is used as a time measure : headlines as inserts to show Rocky's progress
in crime remind of Dos Passos's newsreels in USA.
The press is also a corrupted element or a weapon against crime : Jerry addresses
the press to start his fight but they all turn him down except one , The Morning
Press whose editor is a certain Mr White, not to mention the press cleaning power.
Some comic elements appear in the film to make a balance with Rocky's stubborn ascension
to crime.
Laurie Martin (the girl with pigstails) appears a second time to revenge against
Rocky's trick of pulling her hat down to the ears many years later.
Rocky cannot help sit back and laugh.
Point to be noticed : the initials of Jerry Connolly are the same as
Jesus Christ.
Perhaps is it by chance.
Jean-Claude.
GICANAUTES
---A lire absolument :
LE CRIME A L'ECRAN, UNE HISTOIRE
DE L'AMERIQUE
par Michel CIMENT, Gallimard,
Coll. Découvertes, n°139.
> Il existe un petit "Découvertes"
(n°139) chez Gallimard sur le film noir :
Le crime à l'écran, une histoire de l'Amérique par Michel
Ciment (de Positif).
C'est une introduction assez agréable au thème.
Il y a des photos, des résumés de films, et même le code Hays.
Le tout en français, en couleurs...
Quelques notes de lecture qui ne feront jamais
justice à ce bel ouvrage!
---1. CRIMES EN SILENCE
Le film criminel prend racine dans le western.
Les contrastes sont simples : Noir / blanc, bien / mal.
Le western donne une vision plutôt optimiste de l'Amérique (ère
de prospérité) tandis que le film criminel apparaît plus pessimiste
en regard des années sombres.
Là où le western offre un décor ouvert, horizontal et optimiste,
le film criminel présente un décor urbain, vertical et oppressant.
D.W GRIFFITH fut le premier à filmer l'Amérique pauvre en bon
disciple de Dickens :
A Terrible Discovery (1912) ;
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
dans lequel les thèmes rejoignent ceux du film criminel plus tard : Gangs
rivaux, corruption de la police, bars, dancings, impasses de briques sales, misère
conduisant à la délinquance et souci documentaire..
Le cinéma est l'apanage des couches populaires
le Nickel Odeon = on pouvait voir des films pour un « nickel
».
La bourgeoisie préfère le théâtre.
Les producteurs, après une première vague d'émigration, sont
Russes, Polonais ou Allemands.
1920's = années de la prohibition, du jazz et des spectacles. S'installe aussi
la peur des communistes.
Gangster romantique :
Underworld (Von Sternberg, 1927)
---2. LA DECENNIE DES GANGSTERS. LES ANNEES TRENTE
1927 correspond à l'apparition du
son capable d'enregistrer les bruits de la ville dont le meilleur exemple reste
Scarface (1932), film de Howard Hawks produit par Howard Hughes:
- son des mitraillettes,
- crissement des pneus,
- sirènes de police,
- explosion de grenades,
- téléphone,
- musique de jazz,
- dialogues hachés
sont les ingrédients du film de gangsters.
Prohibition : Volstead Act (Janvier 1920)
Al Capone devient une figure emblématique du Chicago des années
1927-1930.
La Warner faisait des films peu coûteux, d'où son intérêt
pour les films de Gangsters : costumes de tous les jours, décors dépouillés
de rues
Darryl F. Zanuck (chef de production) est réputé pour ses histoires
violentes, rapides et dépouillées, il confie à
Melvyn Le Roy l'adaptation de
Little Caesar (1931). Le générique présente d'emblée
une caution morale : « ceux qui vivent par l'épée, périront
par l'épée . », citation de la Bible.
- Little Caesar forme avec
- Public Enemy (1931) et
- Scarface
une espèce de trilogie du film de gangsters.
Dans les trois films, les héros sont émigrés, ont une sexualité
trouble.
Dans
Public Enemy Tom Powers est irlandais et brutalise les femmes (scène
fameuse du pamplemousse écrasé) ; dans
Little Caesar , Rico est italien et ignore les femmes pour leur préférer
la compagnie d'un ami danseur ;dans
Scarface Tony, italien lui-aussi, entretient un rapport quasi - incestueux
avec sa sur.
Leurs points communs sont le vol et le trafic d'alcool.
Leurs morts sont ignominieuses.
Seuls le foyer et la mère sont respectés, tradition catholique et sacrée.
Scarface représente la version noire du self-made man prôné
par Horatio Alger : détermination et énergie, étant des vertus
purement américaines :
«La fascination qu'exerce le gangster vient
probablement de ce mélange insolite entre une efficacité toute anglo-saxonne,
une manière rationnelle d'aborder l'action et le caractère archaïque
de comportements dont l'origine remonte à une culture ancienne, méditerranéenne,
foncièrement tragique, incarnée par la mafia, ou plus lointainement
encore, à un monde plein de bruit et de fureur, qui a pu faire dire à
Howard Hawks que son Scarface c'était «les Borgia à Chicago
». »(p.39)
Le gangster est solitaire et mégalo, mégalomanie
symbolisée par les enseignes lumineuses à l'extérieur des cabarets.
L'histoire est cyclique : un caïd est remplacé par un autre. Le début
du film préfigure déjà la fin inéluctable du personnage.
1931: J. Edgar Hoover, patron du FBI, trouve que les films glorifient les
délinquants plutôt que les policiers.
Will Hays, président du MPPDA - Motion Picture Producers and Distributors
in America trouve qu'on donne dans les films, une trop grande imporatnce aux
gangsters.
Le Code Hays entre en vigueur en 1934 et interdit de montrer :
- La vengeance par l'assassinat.
- Les incendies volontaires
- L'emploi de la dynamite
- Les scènes à caractère sexuel.
05/12/1933. Fin de la prohibition adoptée
par le Congrès.
1929. Massacre de la St-Valentin.
1931. Arrestation d'Al Capone
G-Men (William Keighley, 1935) James Cagney joue dans un film à
la gloire des policiers.
De même que dans
Bullets or Ballots (1936)
du même réalisateur, Edward G. Robinson in carne un policier
dont l'insigne permet de légitimer la violence.
A l'époque de Roosevelt, on s'attache plus au sort de l'homme ordinaire ballotté
par les événements et victime du système, personnages incarnés
par Gary Cooper ou James Steward.
Dans
Fury (1936)
Fritz Lang dénonce le lynchage et la violence des masses.
La société est mise en question, on montre les conditions de vie dans
les ghettos avec
Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938).
La convention d'Atlantic City en 1934 met fin à la figure emblématique
du gangster.
C'est le début du crime organisé, de la Murder Inc. , le
syndicat du crime.
---3. FILM NOIR.
Début du privé dans
The Maltese Falcon ( John Huston,1941)
dont le climat d'angoisse correspond à celui de la 2°Guerre Mondiale.
La rencontre Hammett et Huston, mariage réussi de la littérature et
du cinéma : concision, impassibilité du regard, écriture sèche
et brutale qui restitue les comportements.
Sam Spade entretient la mythologie Bogart privé à feutre mou, imperméable,
cigarette.
L'enquête devient un jeu intellectuel et cérébral rappelant le
roman policier à la Sherlock
voire selon Edgar Poe. Le personnage du privé remonte à cette période.
Décor :
« immeubles à demi-décrépis où officient des
hommes d"affaires sans grand succès et des avocats véreux. »
Sam Spade comme Philip Marlowe ont trois vertus essentielles :
- la fidélité en amitié ;
- le stoïcisme,
- le goût du travail bien fait.
On assiste à une disparition du gangster
en ce sens que criminel et privé ne peuvent partager le rôle central
du film.
Le privé agit contre la corruption urbaine dans un monde de malaise et de
menace diffuse dus à la menace nazie , l'entrée en guerre des USA et
le début de la guerre froide jusqu'au milieu des 1950s.
«Film noir» est une expression française issue de la «Série
Noire» de Marcel Duhamel qui a fait connaître en les traduisant des auteurs
comme Hammett, Chandler, Cain ou Irish.
Les films noirs décrivent, selon Nino Franck,
«le dynamisme de la mort violente».
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946).
Bogart y incarne un personnage à l'humour à froid, une impassibilité
de surface, solitaire, au caractère taciturne.
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
Edward G.Robinson incarne un héros masculin faible. On y montre le caractère
destructeur de la sexualité. Le couple criminel symbolise une société
ébranlée et le privé un nécessaire retour à l'ordre.
Dans
The Lady In The Window (1944) et
Scarlet Street (1945), tous deux de Fritz Lang,
E.G. Robinson apparaît en Américain moyen dans une atmosphère
oppressante de fatalité inexorable.
Le film policier semi-documentaire.
Influence des films néo-réalistes italiens, ex : Rome, ville
ouverte de Rossellini.
Films fondés sur des faits réels :
- Boomerang (Elia Kazan,1947)
- Call Northside 777 (Henry Hathaway,1948)
- T Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)
« Comme la plupart des films criminels,
Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959) évoque un contexte social
et moral précis : le racisme, la peur atomique, l'homosexualité. Abraham
Polonsky, brillant écrivain et victime de la liste noire aurait participé
au scénario sans être crédité. » (p.67)
Le policier et le privé.
Tandis que le policier a une méthode de travail, appartient à
un groupe et fait confiance aux institutions, le privé est un individualiste
et travaille par intuition.
1950. Année où le plus grand nombre de films noirs ont
été recensés.
- Panic In The Streets (Kazan, 1950) dans lequel priment la métaphore
et l'angoisse sur la reconstitution des faits.
- The Asphalt Jungle (Huston, 1950) d'après un roman de W.R.Burnett.
Les fims de Hold-Up diffèrent des films de prison. Ils montrent un groupe
d'hommes autour d'un chef charismatique.
Retour du gangster.
Le gangster réapparaît dans les 1950s
- 1930s : le gangster s'oppose au monde pour arriver quelque part et
échoue.
- 1940s : le gangster est incertain, incapable d'exercer sa volonté.
- 1950s : le gangster est décrit là où il est,
le plus souvent acculé contre un mur dans une rue sans issue ou prisonnier
d'une organisation qui le domine.
Les entreprises criminelles deviennent des sociétés anonymes.
Force of Evil (Polonski, 1948) :
analyse du capitalisme et des maux qu'il entraîne : appât du gain, culpabilité,
haine et angoisse.
The Enforcer (Walsh, 1950) :
film sur le syndicat du crime.
White Heat (Walsh, 1949) avec James Cagney.
Avec un rythme digne des films des 1930s, Cagney incarne un personnage qui meurt
dans une usine à gaz d'une explosion qu'il a provoquée, métaphoriquement
éclatement de son propre cerveau et du monde vivant sous la menace de l'holocauste
atomique.
C'est avec un certain nombre de séries B violentes que le film noir voit sa
fin.
---4. FORMES ET FIGURES DU FILM NOIR.
Dans les films des 1930s, le spectateur s'identifie
au personnage central.
Le film noir s'oppose aux conventions et incarne la certitude vacillante du public
quant aux valeurs de l'Amérique.
Influence majeure :
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) par l'utilisation du retour en arrière
perceptible dans
Sunset Bld (Billy Wilder, 1950) ou le superbe
Laura (Preminger, 1944) dans lequel on utilise l'inversion du retour en arrière.
L'évocation nécrophile du souvenir est un élément déterminant
de l'atmosphère du film.
Dans Out of the Past (J.Tourneur, 1947) avec Robert Mitchum, le flashback
s'opère pendant un voyage en voiture.
La caméra subjective remplaçant l'il du personnage principal
est utilisée dans
Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947)
et de façon intégrale dans
Lady in the Lake (R.Montgomery, 1947)
qui se solde par un échec.
Lumières.
On a deux sortes de lumière :
- Key light (lumière de base)
- Fill light (lumière d'appoint)
Le film noir minimise la lumière d'appoint,
la photo est sous-exposée.
C'est la fin de l'utilisation de la nuit américaine (Day for night).
On note aussi une meilleure utilisation de la profondeur de champ : situation
des personnages dans leur décor menaçant. Les visages avec une courte
focale agressent le spectateur et traduisent la menace ou la paranoïa. Les images
sont directement issues de l'expressionnisme allemand ; l'univers est
essentiellement urbain.
Les femmes.
Elles incarnent le mythe éternel de la femme représentant la
mort.
C'est une prédatrice, ange ou démon, analogie avec un monde oscillant
sans cesse entre apparence et réalité.
Après la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, les femmes ont des postes à responsabilité.
La violence à l'égard des femmes apparaît pour la première
fois dans Public Enemy de Wellman : la scène du pamplemousse
écrasé contre le visage.
THE GANGSTER FILM - notes
de cours.
«Ordinary people of your class don't understand
the criminal's need for violence» in Don Siegel's The Line up (film).
This remark is typical of the modern ganster film because it implies that the rules
of crime are different from ordinary society and enforce on those who live by them
a unique and rigorous ethic.
«Crime is only a left-handed form of human behaviour.»
Calahern in The Asphalt Jungle conveyed the code of these haunted people.
Characteristic too is the way in which the killer Dancer's comment hints at social
generalisation.
It is not only the criminal commenting on other criminals, it is the criminal commenting
on society and on the forces that encouraged him to enter the half world of crime.
Few gangster films are free of the imputation that the criminals are the creation
of society rather than rebels against it. We have an ambiguous attitude towards criminals,
figures both of threat and glamour.
The basic ganster film character is the product of his harsh environment, violent
laconic and tough. But his involvement in crime seems a matter of chance rather than
choice.
He is an urban wolf, but an urban wolf can equally well be killer or detective, warden
or prisoner. The ethics are similar ; all speak the same discursive language.
A certain ironic humour and modern philosophy are also common to both ganster and
cop, each seeming to express himself with wit and perception about his role in a
way real men would find ludicrous.
They're united in their contempt for the unprofessional, the punks' (= fumistes),
interested only in profits, the freaks who kill for fun or terrorise without point.
In The Asphalt Jungle, this coincidence od attitude is underlined . Cop John Mac
Intire, early in the film, orders his men to squeeze a witness of information by
locking him up, frightening him all the time.
Don't you know your job ?' he snaps. Later, in an identical mood, Gunman Sterling
Hayden beat up a man who has tried to double cross him and snarls What kinda guy
are you now ? Try to shake us down and don't have the guts to go through with it.'
For both, the rituals of professionalism seem more important than the necessities
of crime and detection.
I. CRIME IN AMERICA AS IMPORTED VICE :
No doubt it would have existed had the first waves
of migration in the late 19th century not brought to the US many of the underworld
elements of European sillies. Yet, with the migrants came representatives of the
tightly organized street gangs of French and Italian cities, mafiosi of Sicily, the
violent activistsof the Balkans.
The influx led to the foundation of the fanatical and brutal society of the 1920s.
As Kenneth Allsop points out : The gangster of the Prohibition era was almost invariably
a Sicilian, an Irishman or a Jew.'
It was mainly from the sons of the 1880s immigrants that the underworld drew its
most clever recruits. Although the mafia was in NY in the 1890s, its activities were
limited.
D.W.Griffith in The Musketeers of Pig Alley shows how the street gang existed at
the time, ruling a few blocks getting along on the proceeds of extorsion and petty
theft, a far cry from the profitable and well organized activity of Italians where
in many communities the Mafia and local government were often indistinguishable.
But the tempo of criminal life quickened in the period following WWI when soldiers
demobbed to unemployment, social unrest and injustice turned to civil disobedience,
union agitation and sometimes crime as a means of satisfying their taste for violence
and their need for the necessities of life.
Into this potentially explosive situation, the US government in 1920 introduced prohibition
of liquor , the nation's most disastrous social experiment.
The European gangs found themselves with an illegal industry, bootlegging.
They were not inclined to obey a Puritan injonction to abstain and welcomed as social
institutions the illegal liquor market all over the US , particularly in Chicago
where social conditions favored the illegal liquor industry and where the gangs found
new sources of revenue.
II. PROHIBITION AND THE LEGEND OF CRIME :
a. The legend of crime :
The legend of crime began with Prohibition. By the
middle '20s, the public became aware of certain individuals in the underworld. One
was Arnold Rothstein, a NY bootlegger, gambler and racketeer, the original of Meyer
Wolfsheim in F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, also Nathan Detroit in Damon
Runnyon's Guys and Dolls sketches as well as of films like Street of Chance in 1930,
The Big Bankroll in 1959 and many others.
The stereotype of the brightly dressed clever and arrogant gang boss is derived directly
from him.
The second figure who emerged was Al Capone who, before he was 30, had taken over
Chicago and the national bootlegging industry.
Public interest in Al Capone, Rothstein and people like them led to many autobiographical
films, many based on actual figures. Most only sought to tell the story of the gangster's
rise and fall and were usually violent until the end when the gangster was shown
shot down by the law.
Rothstein was killed in 1928 and Al Capone jailed in 1931, but they left behind a
legacy that would rack America for decades and also provide Hollywood with a basis
for its next cycle of crime films.
Both men had realized that profit depended on organization and cooperation between
gangs.
Rothstein in NY and Al Capone in Chicago had put order above all.
After's Rothstein's death, Al Capone called a meeting in NY of the major criminal
powers and suggested the logical extension of this policy, a national syndicate to
coordinate criminal activity.
Although the plan was rejected by the mutually suspicious gangs, the meeting did
lead to cooperative projects like the execution service later known as Murder Incorporated
and the national illegal betting service that was to provide a gang's main income
after the repeal of Prohibition.
The gangs'new standing in national society was reflected in films that showed crime
as a highly organized industry. Warner Brothers had produced many of the biographical
gangster films, Little Caesar based on Al Capone, the Public Enemy based on Hyme
Weiss as well as many others.
The first all sound film The Lights of New York in 1928 was also (film noir) drawn
from the genre that Warner recognized as a potential gold mine.
A glance at the newspapers gave their writers dozens of plots, particularly when,
after repeal, the gangsters moved in on prostitution (ex : Marked Woman), on the
cab business, trucking, banking and politics. Warner pioneered up the modern crime
film.
b. Rural bandits :
While Hollywood explored the possibilities of organized
crime, another phenomenon was catching public interest : this was the rise of the
rural bandits, independent bank robbers, kidnappers and petty thieves thrown up by
the Depression who briefly ravaged the mid West and the South in 1933 and 1934.
Racing across Oklahoma, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, they struck at isolated
banks and filling stations in daring daylight raids often shooting up buildings and
people with submachine guns before roaring off in their stolen cars.
Most embittered petty criminals, they traded on a corrupt and inefficient state police
to satisfy their simple needs, money, excitement and fame.
[Dillinger = criminel du Sud qui agissait rarement seul et faisait des petits coups
pour survivre, avait la gachette facile]
With the exception of Dillinger, these bandits (Ma Baker & her sons, Charles
Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow, George Machine Gun Kelly, Babyfabe
Nelson) stole only a tiny percentage of the money that Al Capone and his associates
looted from the country.
The gangs looked at them contemptuously, but the Depression society, wary of corruption
in government, apathy in business, welcomed the story of banks held up and policemen
baffled.
It was not their money in the banks and the state police was considered as useless
and corrupt. Flattered by newspaper attention and their legendary status, the bandits
responded writing to the papers and the officers who hunted them, appearing casually
in town to buy food, returning home to visit friends and family, with gestures of
their contempt for the impotebt police force.
This arrogance was their downfall, their growing popularity encouraged the Federal
authorities to intervene. Given powers by Congress after the Lindbergh kidnapping,
the FBI with its biblical righteous leader Edgar Hoover, swept down on bandits and
within a few months in 1934, most were killed, pursued with icy determination across
America by the G-men and shot down with dubious legality by men who knew they had
nothing to lose.
In 1933, at the height of the hunt, the Production Code authority issued an order
that no film on Dillinger or by implication any of the other bandits should be made.
No longer nourrished by publicity, the legends died not to be revived for another
thirty years.
III. WAR AND ORGANIZED CRIME :
The reality of war and oragnized crime burst on
the US at the same time.
a. In the 1930's :
Special investigator, Thomas Dewey, set about cleaning
up New York, convicting Mafia leaders and deporting criminal heads.
In 1939, a small time (=à gage) killer named Abe Reles admitted that for years
he had been a paid assassin for a criminal group that carried out executions for
the group known as Murder Incorporated.
His testimony uncovered evidence of gambling, prostitution and union rackets covering
the whole country of corruption extending into government on all levels into the
state and Federal police and also into the industry.
b. In the 1940's :
War and America's growing involvement in it blunted
the effect of these revelations and diverted Hollywood from making films based on
them. It was not until 1946 that the first films on criminal corruption emerged.
Many of them reflected the socialist humanist views on them who had been attracted
to communism during the period of Soviet Reconstruction in the 1930s and the wartime
entente. (see Wild Boys of the Road)
But the Depression was gone. In the post-war mood of relaxation, optimism and nostalgia,
the realism of The Naked City, Brute Force, Force of Evil, Body and Soul and Cross
Fire forced social awareness and civic indignation once agaon on a careless public
and the world's film goers turned with new interest to Hollywood. But the liberal
spirit of the time was ephemeral with McCarthy withchhunts of the early 50s. The
press ognored crime but it was widely understood that a combination of top gangsters
ran the racket in America.
Gordon Wiles' The Gangster in 1947 was on of the first films to call it the Syndicate.
c. In the 1950's :
In 1952, Senator Kefauver published the findings
of the Senate special committee to investigate crime in interstate commerce of which
he was chairman from May 1950 to May 1951.
A nationwide crime syndicate does exist in the USA'he announced and went on this
nationwide syndicate is a loosely organized but cohesive coalition of autonomous
crime locals who worked together for mutual profit. Behind the local mobs which make
up the national crime syndicate is a shadowy criminal organization known as the Mafia.'
In the 1950s, some films tried to denounce that corruption (The Phoenix City Story,
Chicago Syndicate, New Orleans Uncensored, The City is Dark and The Case against
Brooklyn)
All these films told a story of a cop or private citizen who shows that, behind the
well-cut suit of some local dignitary is a gang boss with contacts in the Mafia or
the mobs. Respecting the FBI's truce with big time crime, these films confined themselves
to a corruption on a city level to a veiled comment that the syndicate was worried.
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