Mafia film
[2] The failure of honest hard work and careful investment to ensure financial security led to the circumstances reflected in the explosion of mob films in Hollywood[3] and to their immense popularity in a society disillusioned with the American way of life.
The years 1931 and 1932 saw the genre produce three enduring classics: Warner Bros.' Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, which made screen icons out of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, respectively, and Howard Hawks' Scarface starring Paul Muni, which offered a dark psychological analysis of a fictionalized Al Capone[4] and launched the film career of George Raft.
[7] In The Public Enemy, the protagonist Tom Powers (James Cagney) is a casually brutal misogynist, most notably expressed in the famous scene when he rammed a grapefruit into the face of his girlfriend after she annoys him.
[12] It faced opposition from regulators of the Production Code, and its release was delayed for over a year while Hawks attempted to tone down the incestuous overtones of the relationship between Paul Muni's character Tony Camonte and his sister (Ann Dvorak).
This is illustrated by James Cagney's role as a law officer in the 1935 movie G Men, and his part as Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
For example, in G-Men, Cagney plays a character similar to that of Tom Powers from The Public Enemy, and although the film was as violent and brutal as its predecessors, it had no trouble getting a seal of approval from the Production Code office.
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.
[20] An additional factor concerning public attitudes was the rural bank robbers operating in the Midwest and in the South were usually WASPs or at least of German descent unlike the gangsters in urban areas who were often Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans or Jewish-Americans.
[27] Typical of these films was In nome della legge (1949) directed by Pietro Germi, which told the story of the magistrate Schiavo newly arrived from the mainland in a town in Sicily oppressed by the corrupt Baron Lo Vasto, who employs the Mafia to terrorize the people.
[28] In other films such as Salvatore Giuliano (1961) by Francesco Rosi, Il giorno della civetta (1968) by Damiano Damiani, and The Brotherhood (1968) by Martin Ritt, the Mafia was depicted as a cruel, oppressive organisation, which was both a result of Sicily's backwardness and its cause.
[33] The principle characters in Mean Streets are not Mafiosi, but rather the "wannabes", a subculture of tough working class Italian-American young men who aspired to join the Mafia.
[33] The only major character who is a Mafiosi is Uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova), a middle-ranking Mafia functionary who works as a loan shark and employs the protagonist Charlie (Harvey Keitel) as a debt collector.
[34] Unlike the "grand romanticism" of The Godfather, Mean Streets is shot in a semi-documentary style on location in a working class New York neighborhood which reflects the influence of French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realist films on its director, Martin Scorsese.
The 1987 The Untouchables directed by Brian De Palma, presented a very fictionalized version of the law enforcement efforts of Eliot Ness to bring down the "Outfit" of Al Capone.
The 1980s saw La Mattanza ("The Slaughter") in Italy as the Corleonesi family proceeded to liquidate its rivals, leading to over 1, 000 gangland murders in 1981-83 and in addition, the Mafia assassinated with impunity magistrates, policemen, and journalists.
The most notable from the decade was the 1990 film Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Ray Liotta as real-life associate of the Lucchese crime family Henry Hill.
[35] The British journalist Tom Brook wrote in 2015: "Goodfellas had such an impact partly because it depicted the ruthlessness of mobster life quite differently from the mafia movies that preceded it".
In Donnie Brasco (1997), 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.
Lo zio di Brooklyn (1995) was a vulgar Italian comedy with all of the characters are grotesquely misshapen in some way, being a metaphor for the stunted nature of Sicilian society that was being held back by the Mafia.
Road to Perdition, a 2002 American crime film directed by Sam Mendes and based on the graphic novel of the same name by Max Allan Collins, boasted an ensemble cast of Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, and Daniel Craig.
[39] Based on a true story, it told the tale of the wife of the Palermo Mafiosi Saro who became engaged in his business and was killed when it was discovered that she was having an affair with his subordinate Massino.
Set in Boston, the film follows the parallel double lives of undercover officer William Costigan Jr. (DiCaprio), who has infiltrated Irish mob boss's Frank Costello (Nicholson) and Colin Sullivan (Damon), who has served as a mole in the Massachusetts State Police.
Set during the Great Depression, the film chronicles the final years of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) as he is pursued by FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), and his relationship with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), as well as Purvis' pursuit of Dillinger associates and fellow criminals Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff) and Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham).
[38] Le conseguenze dell'amore (2004) portrayed a rather ordinary and boring man who works as a money launder for the Mafia in Switzerland, a hero trapped by the "ruthless mechanism of the system".
[43] The stockbroker hero, Titta Di Girolamo, is notable for avoiding all human contact for last 8 years of his life, which is revealed half-way through the film to be a punishment by the Mafia after he made a poor investment; if he ever speaks to anyone again, he will be killed.
The film was directed by Matteo Garrone, based on the book by Roberto Saviano that depicts the modern-day of the Casalesi crime family of the southern Italian region of Campania.
[46] The film told very a Romano and Juliet story as it related the relationship between the Sacra Corona Unita boss, Lucia Rizzo and a prosecutor, Ignazio De Raho, who initially set out to imprison her.
[47] The American scholar Dana Renga argued that the film with its portrayal of Puglia as a lost eden before the founding of the Sacra Corona Unita in the 1980s and Rizzo as the seductive Lilith-like gangster who lures De Raho to his doom has strong sexist elements.
Gangster Squad is a crime film directed by Ruben Fleischer,[49] from a screenplay written by Will Beall, starring an ensemble cast that includes Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, and Sean Penn.
A 2015 Italian mob film, Suburra, directed by Stefano Sollima, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo De Cataldo, starred Pierfrancesco Favino, Elio Germano and Claudio Amendola, and focused on the connections between organized crime and politics in Rome in 2011.
