Pre-Code crime films

Obviously based on the life of Al Capone, Scarface and others like it outraged civic leaders who felt that movies were glorifying the lifestyles of criminals.

Stirred into action by the 1930 Ohio penitentiary fire, which resulted in 300 deaths when guards refused to let inmates out of their cells, Hollywood produced movies which depicted the harsh conditions in prisons at the time.

According to the Encyclopedia of Hollywood's entry on Underworld, "The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist.

[13] The Code later recommended against scenes showing "robbery", "theft", "safe-cracking", "arson", "the use of firearms", "dynamiting of trains, machines, and buildings", and "brutal killings" on the basis that they would be rejected by local censors.

Scenes where criminals aimed guns at the camera were considered inappropriate by many state censor boards in the pre-Code and Code era, and were removed from public viewing.

[15] Capone gave Chicago its "reputation as the locus classicus of American gangsterdom, a cityscape where bullet-proof roadsters with tommygun-toting hoodlums on running boards careened around State Street spraying fusillades of slugs into flower shop windows and mowing down the competition in blood-spattered garages.

[19] In April 1931, the same month as the release of The Public Enemy, Hays recruited former police chief August Vollmer to conduct a study on the effect gangster pictures had on children.

[20] Although Hays used the results to defend the film industry,[20] the New York State censorship board was not impressed and from 1930 to 1932 removed 2,200 crime scenes from pictures.

[21] One of the factors that made gangster pictures so subversive was that in the difficult economic times of the Depression there already existed the viewpoint that the only way to get financial success was through crime.

[6][26] Caesar, along with The Public Enemy starring James Cagney, and Scarface featuring Paul Muni, were incredibly violent films that created a new type of anti-hero.

[29] Warner Brothers 28‑year‑old head of production Darryl F. Zanuck decided to make a gangster picture in 1930 after one of his close friends was killed by a bootlegger.

[30] Generally considered the grandfather of gangster films,[31] in Caesar, Robinson as Rico, and his close friend Joe Massara (played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), move to Chicago.

[34] The picture has a simple, obvious storyline and is filmed in brighter images during Rico's triumphant rise, and at night and darkly shot during his fall.

[38] Wingate told Hays that he was flooded with complaints from people who saw kids in theaters nationwide "applaud the gang leader as a hero.

[30] Caesar's success inspired MGM's The Secret Six and Fox's Quick Millions, and Paramount's City Streets, but the next big Hollywood gangster came from another Warner Brothers picture.

[40] William Wellman's The Public Enemy (1931) was released by Warner Brothers the following year and features another career defining performance, this time by James Cagney.

[43] The film is similar to the template set in Caesar in that it follows Tom Powers (Cagney) from his rise to his eventual fall in the world of crime.

[48] The film's trailer featured no scenes from the movie; it merely contained a warning of the picture's intensity and showcased a gun being fired at the camera.

[40] Public Enemy was a massive box office success, and helped the financial fortunes of Warner Brothers which was still operating in the red at the time.

[50] This embarrassed Hays who had remarked at the film's opening that "the greatest of all censors—the American public—is beginning to vote thumbs down on the "hard-boiled" realism in literature and on the stage which marked the post-war period.

[52][53][54] Directed by Howard Hawks and starring Paul Muni as Tony Camonte, the film is based on the life of Al Capone.

[47] After failing to get the film past the New York State censor board (then headed by Wingate[47]) even after the changes, Hughes decided to release the movie in a version close to its original form.

[58] When other local censors refused to release the edited version, the Hays Office sent Jason Joy around to ensure them that the cycle of gangster films of this nature was coming to an end.

[47][61] Dave Kehr, writing in the Chicago Reader, said that the film blends "comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun.

[66] In the chain gang film, Southern prisoners were subjected to a draconian system in the blazing outdoors where they were treated terribly by their ruthless captors.

[68] In The Big House Robert Montgomery plays a squirmy inmate who is sentences to six years after committing vehicular manslaughter while under the influence.

[74] Decorated veteran James Allen (Paul Muni) returns from World War I a changed man, and seeks an alternative to the tedious job that he left behind.

When the hobo attempts to rob the eatery, Allen is charged as an accessory, convicted of stealing a few dollars, and sentenced to ten years in a chain gang.

[77] Laughter in Hell, a 1933 film directed by Edward L. Cahn and starring Pat O'Brien, was inspired in part by I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

The New Age (an African American weekly newspaper) film critic praised the filmmakers for being courageous enough to depict the atrocities that were occurring in some southern states.

Paul Muni (as Tony Camonte) taunting and laughing at police officers he has just shot at in the trailer for Scarface (1932) . The Hays office wanted this ending of the gangster film replaced with one where Muni's character is tried and executed.
A famous shot, of "Bronco Billy Anderson", from the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery , the first " Western " ever filmed. Scenes where criminals aimed guns at the camera were considered inappropriate by the New York state censor board in the 1920s and usually removed. [ 2 ]
Rico ( Edward G. Robinson ) confronting Joe ( Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ) when Joe wants to leave the mob in Little Caesar (1931). The public's fascination with gangster films, in the early 1930s, was bolstered by, the constant newsreel appearances of, real-life criminals, like Al Capone and John Dillinger , upon whom characters like Robinson's were often based.
James Cagney smashes a grapefruit into Mae Clarke 's face in The Public Enemy (1931).
Paul Muni in the trailer for Scarface (1932), based on the life of Chicago gangster Al Capone . Due to battles with censors, the film was delayed for almost a year. [ 51 ]
Paul Muni prepares to have his ankle shackles bent, via sledge hammer, by the prisoner, in the background in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Based on the autobiographical memoirs of Robert E. Burns , who was himself a fugitive at the time of the picture's release, the film was a powerful agent for social change.