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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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A great film
Amazingly this film came out the same year as 'Little Ceasar'. Two great and highly influential gangster movies released in 1931.
The most obvious film that this influenced was Scorsese's Goodfellas. Cagney's character is Tommy (Tommy is Joe Pesci). The first ten minutes of the film are two boys learning how to be gangsters. Its the same in Goodfellas. Robert DeNiro played Jimmy Conway. 'Nails' Nathan is Jimmy. Both play the older guy looking after their younger compatriates.
The film itself is well structured, with unusually strong parts for women, which are helped by, for the time a brilliant script. William Wellman directs with style and perhaps saves the best until the last scene which is quite shocking even to this day.
For 1931 this is a remarkable film, and its influence remains to this day.
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The Public Enemy
Wellman's "The Public Enemy" launched the film career of a pugnacious Irish-American from Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen who started out as a dancer, only to become the toughest tough guy of them all: Jimmy Cagney, never cockier than he is here. Since organized crime was a fairly new and frightening epidemic at the time, Wellman gives "Enemy" the stark feel of a purely cautionary tale. Both the famous grapefruit scene and Tom's final homecoming still pack a wallop, and a stunning Jean Harlow injects plenty of sex appeal as Tom's gal Gwen.
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Great Cinema
James Cagney was a superstar actor 75 years ago. This is one of his greatest films. The Public enemy is to the gangster movie genre, what "It's a wonderful life" is to Christmas movies. Absolutely integral movie to gangster movie buffs. If you like scarface and goodfellas and the sopranos, you MUST watch this movie. I have seen this movie over 10 times and it is always fun. Cagney was great. This was one of the best dvd purchases I have made.
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The Public Enemy--an artistic yet forceful early look at the mob and their departed...
James Cagney scores a coup in his role as Tom Powers in the movie called The Public Enemy, which chronicles the rise and fall of Tom Powers within the criminal element. Tom's sidekick, Matt Doyle, is played well by Edward Woods. The decision to move Cagney into the leading role and let Matt Doyle be played by Edward Woods works very well for this picture.
The movie begins in the early 1900s when Tom and Matt are already up to no good as young street thugs. Theft, making people fall down, and con jobs are routine parts of their juvenile world. The movie progresses to see Tom and Matt into the early adult lives when they eventually move up in the gangster world in Chicago. They also switch "employers;" they go from working for peanuts from Putty Nose (Murray Kinnell) to making big money working for the big mobster Paddy Ryan (Robert Emmett O'Connor).
The Public Enemy does a great job of displaying the effects of Tom's lifestyle on the members of his household. Tom's brother Mike, played so ably by Donald Cook, acts very convincingly to show his disdain for his brother's involvement with organized crime. Tom's mother, played by Beryl Mercer, remains blissfully unaware that Tom is involved quite so deeply with the mob.
Jean Harlow is about the only actor in this film who could have been used more in the plot; her part is a good one but not a great one. Look for Jean playing Gwen Allen, a love interest of Tom's partway through the picture. She acts wonderfully.
The film's direction by William Wellman shines through all the way through the picture. The most graphic violence is what we never see--instead the camera pans away to show the reaction on Matt's face when Tom kills somebody, or the camera focuses on a record playing on a Victrola when another death has come. Other reviewers note that this enhances the seriousness of the violence--and they are right. Excellent!
The sound quality is excellent for a 76 year old film; and the cinematography is excellent. The characters are well framed within the camera and only off center when it enhances the quality of the scene.
The DVD bonus features only add to this terrific experience. In particular I liked the 20 minute extra entitled Beer and Blood. This extra focuses on Jimmy Cagney and how he participated in the making of this classic movie. The newsreel and shorts reflect good judgment as they greatly enhance the overall experience of watching this movie.
I highly recommend this film for fans of Jimmy Cagney. People who enjoy films about organized crime will consider The Public Enemy to be a classic, too.
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As a tsunami, nothing was able to stop Cagney once he was aroused, and no one even thought to try...
"Public Enemy" brought two things to the screen: the little tough guy, fast-talking, unscrupulous gangster characterization by James Cagney which was to follow him throughout his entire screen career, and the grapefruit scene...
Though "Public Enemy" created the Cagney image, he had already appeared in two other gangsters films for Warners, as a murderer prepared to let someone else pay for his crime in "Sinner's Holiday," and as a double-crossing hoodlum in "Doorway to Hell."
"Public Enemy," however, was a bigger-budget production, directed by William Wellman, and it contained all the elements of success... It is the story of two brothers who become Chicago booze barons in the Twenties... One was Cagney, the other Edward Woods...
It is sometimes claimed that the story of "Public Enemy" is based on that of "Little Hymie" Weiss, leader of the North Side Chicago gang after the murder of Dion O'Banion by the Capones in 1924... What is more likely is that the Cagney characterization is based on "Little Hymie"; the plot itself is pure fiction...
When Cagney, in his striped pajama, sat opposite Mae Clarke at breakfast and decided he had had enough of this boring broad, he wasted no time... He picked up half a grapefruit and planted it full into Clarke's face... It was a piece of screen action which has lasted down the years as the ultimate in violence from the gangster to his moll...
Of course, it isn't - it just seems that way... Since then gir1s have been slapped, kicked, beaten up, run over, shot, stabbed and raped, all in the tradition of mobster violence...
But at the time this scene was daring, and the more daring because it was totally unexpected... We remember Mae Clarke in "Public Enemy," yet forget that Jean Harlow was in it, too... There may have been good reason... The New York Times, reviewing the film in 1934, commented: "The acting throughout is interesting, with the exception of Jean Harlow, who essays the role of a gangster's mistress."
Cagney made violence and a life of crime magically seductive, and "Public Enemy" made him Warners' number 2 gangster, second only to Edward G. Robinson...
