Gangster film
It is a subgenre of crime film, that may involve large criminal organizations, or small gangs formed to perform certain illegal acts.
In 2008, the American Film Institute defines the genre as "centered on organized crime or maverick criminals in a twentieth century setting".
This was at least partly due to the limitations on the genre imposed by the Hays Code, which was abandoned in favor of the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system in 1968.
[6] The so-called "Chivalry movies" of the 1960s gave way to the violent realism of Kinji Fukasaku, whose 1973 Battles Without Honor and Humanity would inspire future filmmakers across the globe.
However, starting in the mid-1930s, the Hays Code and its requirements for all criminal action to be punished, and all authority figures to be treated with respect, made gangster films scarce for the next three decades.
Many of the films imply that criminals are the creation of society, rather than its rebel,[7] and considering the troublesome and bleak time of the 1930s, that argument carries significant weight.
As the 1930s progressed, Hollywood also experimented with the stories of rural criminals and bank robbers, such as John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd.
The success of these characters in film can be attributed to their value as news subjects, as their exploits often thrilled the people of a nation who had become weary with inefficient government and apathy in business.
[11] With the abolition of the Hays Code in the late 1960s, studios and filmmakers found themselves free to produce films dealing with subject matter that had previously been off-limits.
In 1973's Mean Streets, Scorsese directed a cinema vérité story of a young aspiring mobster and his problem-gambler friend, played by Robert De Niro.
The epic story of the Corleone family, its generational transition from post-prohibition to post-war, its fratricidal intrigues, and its tapestry of mid-century America's criminal underworld became a huge critical and commercial success.
Sean Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in his role as an associate of Eliot Ness who helped bring down Al Capone.
Many of these films featured long-time actors, well known for their roles as mobsters such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Chazz Palminteri.
In 1990, Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese, starred Ray Liotta as real-life associate of the Lucchese crime family Henry Hill.
In 1997's Donnie Brasco, Pacino starred alongside Johnny Depp in the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone and his infiltration of the Bonanno crime family of New York City during the 1970s.
Directed by Alan Taylor and produced by David Chase and Lawrence Konner, the film focuses on the young future mafia boss Tony Soprano, with the 1967 Newark riots as a backdrop.
[19] Apart from telling their own tales of African American gangsters in syndicates, films like Black Caesar feature the Italian mafia prominently.
Often the blaxploitation films of the 1970s such as Shaft tell the tale of African American gangsters rising up and defeating the established white criminal order.
[21] Examples of films from the 1990s fitting the African-American gangster genre include Boyz N The Hood, Menace II Society and New Jack City.
[22][21] Brian De Palma's 1983 remake of Scarface stars Al Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban exile and ambitious newcomer to Miami who sees an opportunity to build his own drug empire.
[24] French gangster films appeared again in the mid-1950s, most notably Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi, American blacklisted filmmaker Jules Dassin's Rififi and Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur.
In 1970, in Le Cercle Rouge, Delon, Gian Maria Volonté, and Yves Montand team up to rob an impenetrable jewelry store.
[29] The new style is considered to have begun with Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1972), a violent, realistic portrayal of post-war gangs in the ruins of Hiroshima.
Suzuki's Branded to Kill later inspired other directors in the gangster film genre, including John Woo, Chan-wook Park and Quentin Tarantino.
Examples include: The Hong Kong gangster film genre began with 1986's A Better Tomorrow, directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun Fat.
[33] In 1997, director Aleksei Balabanov released Brother which acquired cult status, and started to return interest of local people to Russian cinema, which had been in crisis since the early 1990s.
