The Public Enemy

In a post in July of 2007, I wrote about a collection of Warner Brothers gangster pictures. As part of my William Wellman retrospective, I have occasion to discuss in further detail one of those films, 1931's The Public Enemy, the film that made James Cagney a star.

Warner Brothers cornered the market on the gangster picture, and tried to make them as gritty and realistic as possible. This earned calls from some for censorship, so the studios added title-cards at the beginning and end to place the film in a sociological context.

The Public Enemy is the story of Tom Powers, who grows up on the streets. His father is a cop (we see him in only one wordless scene, where he beats Tom with a razor strop for stealing), his older brother (Donald Cook) is an upstanding citizen, and his mother (Beryl Mercer) babies him. He and his friend Matt (Edward Woods) steal goods for a local fence called Putty Nose, and eventually gets jobs with a local bar owner and gangster (Robert Emmet O'Connor) as enforcers during prohibition. We see how good Tom is at his job when he visits a local saloon owner who is using the competition's beer.

Tom gets rich, but his brother, who returns from World War I with shell shock, is disgusted by his younger brother's lifestyle. There's a wonderful scene at Cook's homecoming party, which has the comedic sight of a large beer keg sitting in the middle of the table. Cook acts out, smashing the keg and crying out that the beer has blood in it.

Tom is oblivious, and lives the high life. He has one girlfriend, Mae Clarke (who is the famous recipient of a grapefruit in the face) and then he takes up with the glamorous Jean Harlow. But of course Tom will end up paying for his transgressions. When Woods is killed by a rival gang, he seeks revenge, engaging in a shoot out in a storefront during a torrential downpour. He stumbles out, a gun in each hand, wounded, and falls into the flooded gutter, uttering "I ain't so tough." He's not dead, though, and ends up in the hospital, but then gets kidnapped by his enemies. Cook and Mercer wait at home for news, and Cook gets a call that Tom is being brought home. Mercer, still denying her son's criminal enterprises, merrily goes up to his room to get it ready. There's a knock on the door and Cook answers it, and Tom is indeed back--trussed up and stone dead, and he falls forward to the floor.

That scene was extremely shocking in 1931, and still has a powerful impact today. The way it's shot, head on, with a completely black background behind Tom, recalls something out of a Universal horror picture. The shootout scene is also vividly rendered. Of course it is in the rain, a Wellman trademark, and furthermore is done off-screen. Tom goes into the storefront, and we can only hear the gunshots and the screams of those he kills. In fact, much of the violence in this film is off-screen. Putty Nose, who has betrayed Tom, gets his while playing a piano, but the camera pans away and focuses on Woods, who watches with an expression of horror as Tom pulls the trigger and we hear Putty Nose falling against the keys.

Cagney had made a few films before this one, and was initially cast in the part of Matt, while Woods was slated to play Tom. After a few weeks Wellman realized the mistake, the switch was done, and film history was made. Woods would go on to obscurity, while Cagney would become one of the biggest stars in the Hollywood pantheon. Cagney was a different kind of actor, a guy who still had some of the streets in him. A lot of actors in the early sound period over-enunciated their lines, and many were British because they were better trained in diction. But Cagney had none of that--he spoke with the rat-a-tat rhythms of the Upper East Side of New York. In some ways, Cagney was the beginning of naturalistic acting in films.