Crime movies: from Griffith to The Godfather and beyond (uncorrected proof)

Traces the iconography of the gangster character through cinema, beginning with D.W. Griffith's work for Biograph Studios in New York. Catalogues generic tropes such as the stool-pigeon, the charismatic public enemy, the prohibition era bootlegger, police and machine guns. Ben Hecht, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Spencer Tracy, Edward G. Robinson, George Raft, Hell's Kitchen, Paul Muni, Al Capone, Little Caesar, Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra, Richard Widmark, Mickey Rooney, Baby Face Nelson, John Huston, Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, Lepke, Francis Ford Coppola.

Part of the Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell Collection