1972 – Francis Ford Coppola – From the opening scene of a Mafia princess’ wedding to the brilliant closing sequence of a baby's christening interlaced with multiple murders, The Godfather illuminates the dichotomy of Mafia—and in some ways, American—values. Family, friendship, loyalty, togetherness: all are evident and all are expendable as this story of …
1974 – Francis Ford Coppola – Seldom is a sequel anywhere near as satisfying or well made as the original; this one is both—if it is a sequel at all. In fact, both movies may be regarded as two parts of the same enormous story: the founding, growth, and decline of the Corleone crime family. Not only does The Godfather, Part II tie into the original film, but it also tells two…
1984 – Sergio Leone – Sometimes a movie can take a collection of characters and follow them over decades in the manner of a long novel. Their lives separate and connect in what first seems to be random ways and later appears part of a pattern—like life itself—so that trivial-seeming details later resonate when put in the context of thirty years. The long (227-minute) v…
1983 – Brian De Palma – Brian DePalma and screenwriter Oliver Stone remade Howard Hawks’ 90-minute gangster classic from 1932 into a large-scale crime drama that charts the rise and fall of Cuban refugee Tony Montana (Al Pacino). Visually and verbally, the film has the appeal of a roadside accident with the wreckage still smoking. You can't quite avert your eyes. The d…
1949 – Raoul Walsh – James Cagney was fifty years old when he played Cody Jarrett, one of the first screen psychopaths to seize the public's attention. Earlier misfits, like Humphrey Bogart's Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest and Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall, did not carry those films as Cagney's character does here. The twisted fun of White Heat is in…
Warner Bros. seemed to hold the rights to the gangster film in the 1930s, in part through the great work of their set designer Anton Grot, who was able to suggest a gritty urban feel in an era of movie escapism. The films that can lay claim to reaching an epic stature probably do so through a defining, indelible performance, such as those of James Cagney in Public Enemy (1930), Edward G. Robinson …