Early Hollywood in the 1936 film,
The Petrified Forest in 1939's
Invisible Stripes In 1931 and 1932, three of the most enduring gangster films ever produced were made.
Scarface,
Little Caesar and
The Public Enemy remain as three of the greatest examples of the genre. 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. Politics combined with the social and economic climate of the time, influenced how crime films were made, and how the characters were portrayed. Many of the films imply that criminals are the creation of society, rather than its rebel, and considering the troublesome and bleak time of the 1930s, that argument carries significant weight. Often the best gangster films are closely tied to the reality of crime, reflecting public interest in a particular aspect of criminal activity. Thus, the gangster film is in a sense, a history of crime in the United States. The institution of
Prohibition in 1920 led to an explosion in crime, and the depiction of bootlegging is a frequent occurrence in many early mob films. 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. As the newly formed FBI increased in power, there was a shift to favour the stories of the FBI agents hunting the criminals, instead of focusing on the criminal characters. In 1935, at the height of the hunt for Dillinger, the Production Code office issued an order that no film should be made about Dillinger, for fear of further glamorizing his character. Many of the 1930s crime films dealt with class and ethnic conflict, notably the earliest films, reflecting doubts about how well the American system was working. As stated, many films pushed the message that criminals were the result of a poor moral and economic society, and many criminal protagonists are portrayed as having foreign backgrounds or coming from the lower class. Thus, the film criminal is often able to evoke sympathy and admiration from the viewer, who often shift the blame from the criminal's shoulders, onto a cruel society in which success is difficult. At the end of the 1930s, crime films became more figurative, representing metaphors, as opposed to the more straight forward films produced earlier in the decade, showing an increasing interest in offering a thought provoking message about criminal character.
New Hollywood , 1976 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. It won the
Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the award for Best Actor for
Marlon Brando and is widely considered one of the
greatest American films of all time. In 1974,
The Godfather Part II became the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year and garnered 11
Academy Award nominations. It again won Best Picture. Coppola won Best Director and
Robert De Niro won best supporting actor for his portrayal of a young
Vito Corleone. The lesson of the films' successes was not wasted on Hollywood. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the studios issued a steady flow of films about Italian American gangsters and the Mafia. Some of these were critically acclaimed. Scorsese's
Goodfellas about
Henry Hill's life and relationship with the
Lucchese and
Gambino crime families, was nominated for six
Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director and won the award for Best Supporting Actor for
Joe Pesci's performance. Italian-American film
Once Upon a Time in America directed by
Sergio Leone about
David "Noodles" Aaronson played by
Robert De Niro is considered one of the best gangster films of all time. The 1987 film
The Untouchables was nominated for four
Academy Awards.
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. Others, however, strayed into stereotypes and the gratuitous use of Italian ethnicity in minor characters who happened to be criminals. This created a backlash in a portion of the Italian American community.
Scorsese and the 1990s–2010s In the 1990s there were several critically acclaimed mob films, many of which were loosely based on real crimes and their perpetrators. 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. It was one of the most notable gangster films of the 1990s. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci also starred in the film, with Pesci earning an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, making
Goodfellas one of the most critically acclaimed crime films of all time. In 1990,
The Godfather Part III was released. Al Pacino reprised his role as the iconic
Michael Corleone. The film served as the final installment in The Godfather trilogy, following Michael Corleone as he tries to legitimize the Corleone family in the twilight of his career. In 1993, Pacino starred in ''
Carlito's Way'' as a former gangster released from prison who vows to go straight. In 1994,
Pulp Fiction was released, starring
John Travolta and
Samuel L. Jackson as hitmen in an Los Angeles gang. In 1995, following their collaboration in
Goodfellas, Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci teamed up again to make
Casino, based on
Frank Rosenthal, an associate of the
Chicago Outfit, that ran multiple casinos in Las Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s. The film was De Niro's third mob film of the 1990s, following
Goodfellas (1990) and
A Bronx Tale (1993). In 1996,
Armand Assante starred in the television film
Gotti as infamous New York mobster,
John Gotti. 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. It was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 2006, Scorsese released
The Departed, his adaptation of
Infernal affairs, the Hong Kong film.
The Departed was also loosely based on the
Whitey Bulger story, and Boston's
Winter Hill Gang, which Bulger led. It earned Scorsese an
Academy Award for Best Director, and won the
Academy Award for Best Picture. A 2018
biographical mafia film,
Gotti, directed by
Kevin Connolly, stars
John Travolta as John Gotti, released in June. On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes, the film
holds an approval rating of 0% based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 2.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "
Fuhgeddaboudit." In 2019, Martin Scorsese released a biographical mafia film distributed by
Netflix,
The Irishman, starring all three heavyweights in the genre,
Robert De Niro as
Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran,
Al Pacino as
Jimmy Hoffa and
Joe Pesci as
Russell Bufalino.
2020s In 2021,
The Many Saints of Newark was released, as a prequel to
David Chase's HBO New Jersey Italian mafia series,
The Sopranos. 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.
African Americans 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. African Americans were under-represented in filmmaking roles during much of the 20th century. It took African American producers and directors of the 1990s like
John Singleton,
Spike Lee and the
Hughes Brothers to begin exploring the criminal lifestyle in American urban communities, telling stories of drugs, gang culture, gang violence, racism and poverty in African American communities.
Cocaine and the cartels 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.
Abel Ferrara's 1990
King of New York tells the story of Frank White, (
Christopher Walken) and his return to New York City from prison. He navigates both the traditional Italian mafia authorities as well as the new cartels, as they are producing, smuggling and distributing cocaine in an uneasy business alliance. ==Latino gang films==