If ever a movie belonged to a single actor, this is it. As a gangster movie The Public Enemy is somewhat creaky, and mainly interesting as a look at the genre's origins, but Jimmy Cagney brings it to electrifying life. Watching his manic performance as the cocky, ambitious thug Tom Powers, I could see the precursor of decades of movie antiheroes, from Richard Widmark to Malcolm McDowell to Al Pacino. Like most gangster films of the time, The Public Enemy tries to wrap itself in the mantle of a moral tract. An opening title card announces that Powers should not be taken as an individual character, but as a type, a characteristic example of an urban criminal. The narrative proceeds to give a standard history of this type is formed, beginning with him getting into petty crime as a kid, and then following him as he proceeds up the ranks of the underworld. Also along the way you see can see the building blocks for basically every subsequent gangster film: the misogyny (most famously illustrated when Cagney, sitting at the breakfast table with his moll, suddenly reaches over and smacks her in the face with a grapefruit; the disapproving family members; the protagonist's more moral sidekick ( a type seen as recently as in the Brazilian crime epic City of God). These ingredients don't jell quite as well as they would in subsequent crime films. I once skimmed through Cagney's memoir, in which he spoke of making these movies, even the famous ones, as being a fairly haphazard process in which memorable scenes came out of last-minute inspiration more often than great writing and far-sighted planning. This might have been partly just humility on Cagney's part, but I can also see it borne in Public Enemy's somewhat half-baked script. Of course any film would probably seem lacking after 70 years of imitators. Aside from Cagney, the performers are definitely a mixed bag. The actor who plays Cagney's law-abiding brother seems to be in a different movie; specifically, a circa-1910 inspirational stage melodrama with a title like "The Road to Ruin, or, the Drunkard's Progress." Conflict between brothers is a great subject for gritty urban melodramas, from "On the Waterfront" to "Raging Bull," but the character's conflict with Cagney doesn't go much farther than, "No, I won't drink your filthy liquor!" (not an actual line from the movie, but it could be). Jean Harlow shows how she came to be regarded as a sex symbol, but her acting is as painful inept as any Bond Girl's. Also, her character doesn't really go anywhere. The film doesn't feature quite as much mob warfare as I expected, probably another sign that the model was still being established. William Wellman's direction generally avoids the static quality often present in films of this era, and he handles the scenes of violence especially well, with terse, confident style. The final shootout occurs completely off-screen, with the audience seeing only the build-up and then the aftermath, and looks ahead to Takeshi Kitano's minimalist mob flick "Sonatine." Gangster movies generally walk a fine line between celebrating and condemning the lifestyles of their characters- think of The Godfather. The moralistic messages of '30s mob movies are often so at odds with the real reason that people watch them that their supposed social responsibility seldom convinces. The Public Enemy certainly did more in the long run to make gangsters look glamorous than to attack them, but it does boast memorable final "warning" against crime. Towards the end Tom Powers is confined to a hospital bed after a shootout, and he seems ready to put his old life behind him. In the final scene, as his mother makes up his old room, preparing for her son's return, someone knocks on the front door. Power's brother opens it, to be confronted with the horror-movie image of his mummified corpse, bandaged up from head to toe. Cagney's body falls across his home's threshold, an obvious but unforgettable ending.
Review of The Public Enemy
