Little Caesar (1931)

[drinkanddestroy]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021079/

Little Caesar (1931)

The story of the rise and fall of an Al Capone-like gangster in Prohibition-era Chicago.

Cast, courtesy of imdb

Edward G. Robinson    ...   Little Caesar - Alias 'Rico'
    Douglas Fairbanks Jr.    ...   Joe Massara
    Glenda Farrell    ...   Olga Stassoff
    William Collier Jr.    ...   Tony Passa
    Sidney Blackmer    ...   Big Boy
    Ralph Ince    ...   Pete Montana
    Thomas E. Jackson    ...   Sergeant Flaherty (as Thomas Jackson)
    Stanley Fields    ...   Sam Vettori
    Maurice Black    ...   Little Arnie Lorch
    George E. Stone    ...   Otero
    Armand Kaliz    ...   De Voss
    Nicholas Bela    ...   Ritz Colonna (as Nick Bela)

I give the movie a 4/10

Edward G. Robinson is terrific. But other than him, I just couldn't stand many of the other actors and the cop, with these
way-over-the-top annoying tough guy accents. That killed this movie for me, pretty much singlehandedly. Like each gangster (and cop) is trying to outdo the other with these annoying phony tough guy accents, and they sound cartoonishly silly. Almost every time anyone other than Robinson opened his mouth, I wanted to kill myself. It's a shame because other than that, the scenes themselves were mostly very good – with the exception of that sequence involving the guy who turned yellow, which was one awfully annoying sequence – if not for those annoying tough-guy-speak, this rating would have been several points higher.

[Moorman]

Edward G. Robinson as the original O.G. ? I'm purchasing this based just on that... lol

[drinkanddestroy]

I’d change one thing from my original comments: Robinson is alright here, but not nearly as good as many of his other performances.

[moorman]

Finally got around to watching this.  This film has to be taken in context. If I was still new to classic noirs/gangster films I most likely would have destroyed it in my review. Now that I have a better grip on these films I have learned to put them more in context.  Due to that I'm gonna give the film two ratings.

First. As a straight up production I felt the film was seriously lacking.  The film played like a stage play with shaky acting with the exception of Edward G. Robinson.  Key scenes were rushed and one of the main ones shown as a almost incoherent montage.  This contributed to the stage play atmosphere along with the obvious sound stage settings. As a production I thus rank this as a 4 out of 10.

Now, putting this film in context, this is a BRILLIANT film.  As one of the FIRST gangster films you have to start there with how you really view it.  There is soo much history here I don't know where to begin.  Let me say that as I watched the film it was like watching the origins of key scenes in gangster films that are being made today.  I lost count of the references that the 1980s version of Scarface took from this film.  I don't think there is not one gangster film that can't homage to the key elements of Little Caesar.  With the exception of the ending the De Palma version of Scarface is almost scene for scene taken from Little Caesar.
Due to the historical significance of the film and the important key elements established here I rank it as a 9 out of 10 for CONTEXTUAL elements.  This gives the film as final ranking of 6.5 if you wanna meet in the middle.

[drinkanddestroy]

Yeah, if I were watching it on original release I may have loved it. Today, I find it damn near unbearable.


The Public Enemy is not nearly as flawed, but it is still pretty crappy in some respects.

[moorman]

Yeah, if I were watching it on original release I may have loved it. Today, I find it damn near unbearable.


The Public Enemy is not nearly as flawed, but it is still pretty crappy in some respects.

The Public Enemy is a good film. I agree its the better of the two.  I'm gonna purchase both films because they both are important films.