The Public Enemy (1931) This has been one of my favourite movies ever since I watched it as preteen. Some of the scenes have stuck in my mind, especially the incredible (pre-code, I assume) final one, but also the killing of the horse or the grapefruit. In spite of the preachy scenes with the Cagney's brother this earns a 9\10.
hey, so you and I have indeed seen some of the same movies!
I really liked this one; IMO it is better than
Little Caesar (1931)
Scarface (1932), Dillinger (1945)btw, Frayling has discussed (eg. in STDWD's chapter on OUATIA) how Leone believed that much of the stuff in
The Hoods , other than the childhood stuff, was lifted from gangster films.
Well, there is an incident in
The Hoods, from the bottom of p. 247 - p. 251, where "Noodles" goes back to his mother's apartment to visit her, (and he brings her money as well), but he gets into an argument with his brother, cuz his brother was giving him crap about his being a gangster, etc.
If Leone is correct that much of
The Hoods was lifted from gangster films, I wonder if that part was lifted from similar parts of
The Public Enemy.(by the way, I a while ago I started a thread to list all the stuff we can find in
The Hoods that is lifted from gangster films
http://www.fistful-of-leone.com/forums/index.php?topic=10253.0 If you can think of anything, please chime in! )
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So while reading p. 247 of
The Hoods, I just noticed this passage:
" We stood outside undecided how to kill the hour.
There was a small movie house next door, showing two thrilling cowboy pictures, "Destry Rides Again," and "A Bloody Trail." "
I never heard of ABT (and couldn't find it on imdb either), but DRA is a western from 1939
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031225/ (I haven't seen the movie, but) i have seen it discussed here.
I find this interesting because -- while I haven't read the book in a while,
if I recall correctly, that is one of the only things that date the book, other than the fact that it begins in 1916:
There is no specific mention of dates in the book, but on page 10 (in the opening scene in the boys' classroom), they discuss their "election fire" they have in the neighborhood, "... We don't care who's elected, Wilson or Hughes, we have a big fire just the same..."
We know that's 1916, cuz the 1916 Presidential election featured Woodrow Wilson vs. Charles Evans Hughes. So other than the book beginning in 1916, I don't recall there being any way to tell dates; but
Destry Rides Again dates it as happening in (or at least not before) 1939. Furthermore, that's just a bit more than halfway through the book, so if the chapters are written in chronological order, perhaps it ends much later than that (assuming the stuff about
Destry Rides Again is even true, rather than part of Grey's imagination). Remember also, the book does not have the part about Old Noodles coming back; that's all added for the movie. The book only has the equivalent of the movie's first 2 sections, and ends with the part that is the movie equivalent of gangster Noodles leaving New York -- which in the movie is 1933. But based on this
Destry Rides Again reference, the book would actually end much later than 1939 (again, if that stuff was even true in the first place
)
