Born reckless 1930 - An early John Ford talkie with its flaws

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020702/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 5,6

Directors: Andrew Bennison, John Ford
Main Cast: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Frank Albertson, Marguerite Churchill, William Harrigan, Lee Tracy, Ilka Chase

"Born Reckless is a comic look, at a man who is at the fringes of gangdom. The film dances around the edges of the 'gangster picture' as a genre, without ever becoming a full-fledged gangster movie. The film is almost as much of a burlesque of the gangster genre, as Ford's next film Up the River will be of the prison movie.
Based on a true story, this drama profiles the experiences of a young gangster. After getting caught during a robbery, the gangster is given a choice: he can either go to prison or join the military. He chooses the military. However, when he returns home, he returns to gangster life. So the hero starts out as a crook: a member of a gang that commits burglaries. While technically thus a 'gangster', he never becomes a big time criminal, and never becomes involved in bootlegging or other typical activities of Al Capone era gangdom. And he keeps trying to get out of this world, during most of the picture.
Neither Born Reckless nor Ford approve of gangsters. Unlike most 'real' gangster movies, Born Reckless does not idolize or glorify gangsters. Instead, it views them in a negative and satirical light. Born Reckless is based on the novel Louis Beretti (1929) by Donald Henderson Clarke. By 1929, gang tales were popular in stage and prose fiction, as well as movies.
In his long career John Ford shared directorial credit in two other films, Mister Roberts and Young Cassidy. Both were considerably better than Born reckless. Andrew Bennison who was mostly a screenwriter was the co-director, presumably to help Ford over the bumps of the new sound media."

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Scarface 1932 - A gold standard among classic gangster pictures

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023427/?ref_=nv_sr_2
IMDB rating: 7,8

Directors: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson
Main Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Boris Karloff

"Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name is a potent, uncompromising portrait of the gangster life. While journalists often romanticized them, and many in the public made mobsters into folk heroes, director Howard Hawks' portrayal of the brutish and ambitious Capone-inspired titular character, played with terrific ferocity by Paul Muni (this movie made him a star, and it is easy to see why) is brutal and stark. The pre-noir gangster genre was in many ways defined by the innovative approaches taken by Hawks in Scarface. Tracking and dolly shots, relatively unknown at the time, contribute to the film's kinetic energy and excellent pacing. The expressionistic black-and-white cinematography by Lee Garmes is married to a screenplay (written by a team led by Ben Hecht) packed with symbolism as well as a rare combination of humor, sex, and violence. Paul Muni's portrayal of Al Capone surrogate Tony Camonte etched a screen original: a merciless assassin who's not only reflexively criminal but pre-civilised, almost pre-evolutionary, a simian shadow ready to rub out the world if he can't have it for his own. This extremely violent film (28 murders are recorded onscreen) also grafts a racy incest theme (Muni's character has Caligula-like feelings for his sister, played with remarkable sexual confidence by Ann Dvorak) onto the story line, resulting in considerable pressure from censors (the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) coming to bear on the filmmakers (in this pre-Hays Production Code era).
Producer Howard R. Hughes couldn't release Scarface until he toned down some of the violence, reshot certain scenes to avoid libel suits, added the subtitle 'The Shame of the Nation' to the opening credits, and shoehorned in new scenes showing upright Italian-Americans banding together to wipe out gangsterism. This is still one of the greatest, darkest, most deeply exciting films American cinema has produced."

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