Rent Little Caesar (1931)

Gangster Prototype. - Little Caesar review by Steve

Pioneering early sound gangster film. Credit to WR. Burnett who wrote the source novel, based on Chicago mafia boss Al Capone, which shaped the genre for the next ten years. It's a rags to riches story. A crime empire is built through violence, which is destroyed by violence, and the anti-heroes' hideous flaws. It's the darker side of the American dream.

Little Caesar invented the look of the mob film: the loud, expensive clothes; the big black sedans; the platinum moll in silver lingerie; the Tommy guns. But it is very dated. The scenes with dialogue are static and most of the support performances are creaky. A weeping Italian mother is unbearable. There's not nearly enough of Glenda Farrell, playing a pugnacious, fast-talking night club dancer.

There are the thumbprints of the studio lawyers all over the film. Rico (Edward G. Robinson) can't be a charismatic figure, so he is the worst man possible: vain, disloyal, stupid, arrogant. And just in case the audience doesn't get the message there is a written homily scrolled down the screen before the film starts. The moralising is too intrusive.

Robinson dominates the film and he creates one of the defining visual images of thirties Hollywood cinema, crouched over a machine gun in his vulgar duds, chewing a cigar. There's some punchy tough guy talk but we don't see much of prohibition or how the mob actually make their money. There is fascinating social history and it's a groundbreaking film but greatly limited by censorship and available technology.