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

story of The Public Enemy is essentially a true story, all names and characters appearing
herein, are purely fictional.” This kind of note either at the beginning or the end of the
films was forced on films by the censors to show the audiences, as said above, that crime
does not pay, no matter how attractive its fleeting rewards. In the same vein, perhaps, the
film shows the two brothers, Tom and Mike, two sides of the same coin, that is, both
brought up in the same social context and yet with separate moral codes in the face of the
world. The type of cruelty that Tom Powers brags about is depicted throughout the four
main moments of the narrative described above. Thus, he badgers Matt’s little sister,
making her fall while she is roller-skating, slaps Jane (Mia Marvin) without any particular
reason, and finally, squashes half of a grapefruit onto Kitty’s (Mae Clark) face, one of the
most iconic scenes in the film (fig. 15 left).
Figure 15. The Public Enemy
Both films depict a sociology of crime rising from poverty and childhood abuse,
with characters that are converted into stereotypes mostly described through the brutality in
their actions, the infantilism of their behaviour, their vanity in their smoking tuxedos, their
fascination with luxury as a sign of power, the repressed homosexuality manifested in their
reactions to women and the kind of relationship they maintain with their friends (Joe
Masara and Matt Doyle, respectively). Perhaps too, for the same reasons, the film ends
with another disclaimer, alerting the audience that “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.”
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