Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

Ben Hecht story and despite being predicted to be a failure (to the extent that Hecht wanted
to have his name removed from the credits list), it turned out to be a great success, giving
Hecht the first of his two Academy Awards. The movie is still written about as the first real
gangster movie; and whether one agrees with this or not, the evidence of Sternberg’s rich
imagination, expressed in his mixture of realism and German Expressionism, is
undeniable. The themes of alienation, betrayal and corruption depicted in this shadowy and
moody von Sternberg film all anticipate film noir. Indeed, some other films by Josef von
Sternberg are also considered to have influenced the development of film noir. In movies
like The Docks of New York (1928) and proto-noir Thunderbolt (1929), the Austrian-born
US director evokes an underworld of prostitution, jail and criminality that would constitute
the subject matter of many noir productions, like, for example, The Shanghai Gesture
(1941), also directed by von Sternberg. In fact, this early noir film explores the decadent
lives and secret pasts of all its main protagonists, with its evil, nightmarish, almost
Baroque atmosphere holding much of what was to correspond to a standard expression of
the noir vision.
The latter, The Racket, is a Lewis Milestone film and it tells the story of an honest
Irish cop, Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan), who will do anything to destroy
bootlegger and mobster, Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim), but in vain, however, as political
corruption seems to be stronger, letting the Chicago underworld prosper unhindered.
Aghast at the law and the city administration, McQuigg takes justice into his own hands.
Scarsi (a thinly-veiled Al Capone) is the first modern gangster protagonist, clearly based
on real-life gangsters of his day, with political as well as criminal power. It comes as no
surprise then that real crime bosses intimidated the star of the film and asked for it to be
banned. It was censored in many different theatres across the country, as they were not so
eager to see themselves represented on the big screen. Since this movie is lost today, it is
not possible to evaluate its visual impact, but what is germane to this discussion is that
both of the above features constituted a new defining moment for the gangster film, and by
freeing up the use of topical material, often against the orders from moral guardians such
as the Hays-Breen Office, they ultimately also had an impact on film noir.
Three classic gangster films, following each other one year apart, are still seen
today as marking a new film genre and the beginning of a new wave of gangster films,
up outdoor “The City is Yours”, establishing a connection with Underworld or Scarface’s similar logo: “The
World is Yours”.
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