Crime Movies

"Carlos Clarens is one of the most perceptive writers on film. With great skill, he puts things into context, politically. So films are talked about in the context of, say, Roosevelt’s New Deal, and how such things are reflected in James Cagney and Edward G Robinson films. Clarens’ coverage reaches into the 1960s and beyond; he identifies the fact that those set in the 1930s, Bonnie and Clyde, for example, are really about the 1960s. You could argue that that’s a film noir in sensibility, even though it’s in bright colour. Of course, it ends with the bloody death of the hero and heroine, a standard end to a film noir. On the front cover is Bogart in High Sierra , a classic film noir. Do you know the essay ‘The Gangster as Tragic Hero’? It’s a famous American essay by Robert Warshow, an incredibly influential essay. He notes that the gangster is the modern tragic hero, who has to have his moment of fame, like Macbeth , and at one point is at the top of the tree but has a tragic flaw that will destroy him. On the back cover is The Godfather , a great modern film noir. In many ways Coppola’s film shows the development of the theme because it’s more ambiguous. We knew exactly how we were supposed to feel about the gangsters in the 40s but we’re not quite sure of how to feel about Al Pacino, so by the modern era the films have become more ambiguous. We like them because we are shown that they are achievers. Whenever we try to achieve something there is always someone in our way, or someone who should have promoted us, should have seen how good we are. There are jobs we should have got that we didn’t get. Somebody else got them. The gangster just cuts through all the crap – violently – and establishes himself. But the films are all fairly moral. Though, ironically, Scarface , one of the great modern films noirs, has become so iconic that the young men who admire him don’t see that he is a tragically flawed person who dies violently. To them he’s just a hero. He has an enviable lifestyle, lives in a mansion, hoovers cocaine up his nose and his girlfriend is Michelle Pfeiffer in a low-cut dress. Maybe we always just enjoyed the gangster at the top, but we realise a price has to be paid."