A sophisticated gangster movie: money laundering, sex trafficking, electronic surveillance and a climactic multi-car police raid - so much of the final gangster form fully in place - in 1913! I’ve got as far as 1972 and The Godfather in my zig-zag journey through the history of Hollywood. I’m working on a three-part essay about Coppola’s epic. So here, by way of a preview, is the very first film I wrote about for the project: Traffic in Souls (also released under the slightly catchier ‘While New York Sleeps’): https://bit.ly/3FGzfPc
Here’s another true New York gangster movie, from 1928. All the elements are in place, including the wise-cracking, which is kind of remarkable when you consider that Lights of New York is the very first full-length talkie (The Jazz Singer from the previous year doesn’t count because it’s a silent movie for most of its 89 minutes). In the whole run of over 60 films that I’ve written about for GROSS so far, only two are actually gangster movies (a couple more might be considered gangster-adjacent’ but hardly). I guess I’m surprised to learn that the gangster form so rarely reaches the top of the rentals charts. Read about it in GROSS: https://bit.ly/3SRo356
A sophisticated gangster movie: money laundering, sex trafficking, electronic surveillance and a climactic multi-car police raid - so much of the final gangster form fully in place - in 1913! I’ve got as far as 1972 and The Godfather in my zig-zag journey through the history of Hollywood. I’m working on a three-part essay about Coppola’s epic. So here, by way of a preview, is the very first film I wrote about for the project: Traffic in Souls (also released under the slightly catchier ‘While New York Sleeps’): https://bit.ly/3FGzfPc
Here’s another true New York gangster movie, from 1928. All the elements are in place, including the wise-cracking, which is kind of remarkable when you consider that Lights of New York is the very first full-length talkie (The Jazz Singer from the previous year doesn’t count because it’s a silent movie for most of its 89 minutes). In the whole run of over 60 films that I’ve written about for GROSS so far, only two are actually gangster movies (a couple more might be considered gangster-adjacent’ but hardly). I guess I’m surprised to learn that the gangster form so rarely reaches the top of the rentals charts. Read about it in GROSS: https://bit.ly/3SRo356