American Underworld – Part 3: The World Moves On
Sometime between 1932, with the release of Scarface, and 1939, with the release of The Roaring Twenties,…
The Sinful Virtues of BLACK MASS
It is this writer’s pleasure to announce that Scott Cooper’s new gangster flick Black Mass…
American Underworld – Part 2: Enemies at the Gates
“Gangsters are foreigners. He’s an American.” – “Gramp Maple” in The Petrified Forest (1936) In 1931, the…
American Underworld – Part I: Original Gangster
W.R. Burnett’s original 1929 novel Little Caesar opens with a quote from Machiavelli. The 1931…
American Underworld: An Introduction
For this writer, the undignified afterlife of the American gangster movie has been frustrating to…