The Public Enemy (film)

• Release Date: 1931
• Director(s): William A. Wellman
• Writer(s): Harvey F. Thew
• Principal Actors and Roles: James Cagney (Tom Powers); Jean Harlow (Gwen Allen); Edward Woods (Matt Doyle); Joan Blondell (Mamie); Donald Cook (Mike Powers); Beryl Mercer (Ma Powers)
• Book / Story Film Based On: Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon

In the early 1930s a new, violent film genre developed: the realistic prohibition-era gangster movie. A 1931 release, the black-and-white pre-Hayes Code film, The Public Enemy is one of the very best in the genre. Essentially morality plays, these types of movies follow the rise and fall of a violent criminal or gang of criminals, inevitably showing that crime does not pay. In The Public Enemy, the tale follows the life of the gangster Tom Powers from childhood until his death, using Tom’s brother Mike as a counterpoint to suggest that Tom’s tragic existence is a matter of choice as much as environment.

The film depicts psychopathic characters with disturbing realism. For example, when one of Tom’s friends dies as a result of falling from a horse, Tom seeks out the horse and shoots it. The violence of the movie is shocking even by twenty-first century standards, even though much of it occurs offscreen.

The Public Enemy remains one of the best examples from the early days of the gangster-film genre. Along with Little Caesar and Scarface, which were released shortly before and after The Public Enemy, the early 1930s development of gangster dramas mirrored the unsettling rise of gang crimes in America during Prohibition. In the case of The Public Enemy, its violence and open (for the period) sexuality were mitigated by its clear moral message: Everyone gets what he deserves in the end.

Plot

Tom Powers and his lifelong pal Matt Doyle are introduced as Chicago youngsters who blossom into a life of crime under Prohibition. At first they are petty thieves who sell stolen goods to a hoodlum called "Putty Nose."

As they grow up, their crimes escalate. Putty Nose talks them into helping his gang rob a fur warehouse, but in the course of misadventures Tom and Matt shoot a policeman. Putty Nose has disappeared, and Tom flies into a rage, threatening to kill the older criminal when he sees him.

Tom’s older brother Mike works as a streetcar driver and goes to school at night. He unsuccessfully tries to talk Tom out of a life of crime, but Tom responds with cocky scorn. When Mike leaves to serve in the Marines during World War I, Tom’s criminal career continues to develop.

After the end of the war, Tom and Matt join a gang of bootleggers. Mike is disgusted by the source of Tom’s money, and Tom draws a false equivalency between his brother’s killing in war and his own line of work. When Tom shows up with a wad of cash for their mother, Mike refuses the money. Tom tears up the bills and throws them on the floor.

With plenty of money and power on the street, Tom and Matt take mistresses and lead a comfortable life in a hotel. Matt marries his moll, but Tom tires of his girl Mamie. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, he ends their relationship by jamming a grapefruit into her face when she won’t get him a beer for breakfast. It is a chilling moment of amoral violence that is echoed by Tom taking revenge on the horse one of his bosses was riding when he was accidentally killed.

The death of the boss leads to a gang war with a rival crew. After Matt is killed on the street, Tom single-handedly avenges him but is seriously wounded in the process. While bandaged in the hospital, Tom seems to soften. He promises his mother that he’ll come home for good. Mike rejoices that his brother is going to give up his criminal lifestyle.

In the gruesome final scenes, Mike receives a call that Tom is coming home. Mike answers a knock at the door to find Tom standing there, bloody and dead, wrapped in a blanket and tied with ropes. He falls face-first into the house, and in the end a message appears on the screen: "The END of Tom Powers is the end of every hoodlum. ‘The Public Enemy’ is not a man, nor is it a character—it is a problem that sooner or later WE, the public, must solve."

Significance

The Public Enemy was nominated for an Academy Award for best story, but James Cagney’s incredible performance as Tom Powers was not recognized at the time. The character has since been named forty-second on the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 villains. The AFI also listed The Public Enemy as the eighth-best gangster film of all time. In 1998 the film was included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

The enduring significance of the film is in its legacy. James Cagney’s electric portrait of a career criminal—over-energized, brutal, sociopathic but soaked in charisma and animal magnetism, yet also a product of his surroundings and lack of reflection—has been copied too many times to count. The movie itself set a standard for gangster films that has been mimicked ever since. Some of the techniques used in The Public Enemy have also become cinematic models. For example, when Powers pursues the rival gang into a building, the extreme violence is very clear from the shots, screams, and groans—but it is completely unseen. Powers staggers from the battle, wounded, and collapses with the often-quoted line, "I ain’t so tough." And one of its most-powerful symbolic innovations is setting the horrific final scene against the soundtrack of "I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles," a light-hearted popular song. Such masters of the genre as Martin Scorsese have often reprised this to exceptional effect.

The movie was a tremendous hit in 1931, reputedly shot in less than a month for just over $150,000. It was based on the lives of real mobsters and bootleggers in Chicago. Its partial glamorizing of the free-spending criminal lifestyle with its easy money, fancy women, and indifference to danger has also been duplicated in gangster movies forever after, as has its "wages of sin" message in the end.

Awards and nominations

Nominated

• Academy Award (1931) Best Story

Bibliography

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Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, editors. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Gomery, Douglas and Clara Pafort-Overduin. Movie History: A Survey. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.

Hughes, Lloyd. The Rough Guide to Gangster Movies. New York: Rough Guides, 2005. Print.

Munby, Jonathan. Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Print.

Neibaur, James J. James Cagney Films of the 1930s. Lanham: Rowman, 2014. Print.

Schneider, Steven, ed. 101 Gangster Movies You Must See Before You Die. New York: Macmillan, 2006. Print.

Wellman, William, Jr. WildBill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel. New York: Pantheon, 2015. Electronic, print.