Today's Cinema Sunday looks at another pair of movies that came out before the censorship of the Hays Code, also known as the Motion Picture Production Code took effect.
From 1931, it's The Public Enemy, a gangster film directed by William A. Wellman who also directed last week's Night Nurse and the 2nd film in today's post. This movie features an iconic performance by James Cagney as a young man making his way in the criminal underworld.
Irish-American Tom Powers begins his criminal life as a young man, engaging in petty theft with his buddy Matt.
Tom has an older brother named Mike who's an upstanding kind of guy who enlists in the Marines when American enters World War I in 1917. Before he goes,Mike tries to talk Tom out of his life of crime but fails. The best Mike can get is Tom to keep his nefarious activities secret from their doting mother.
Come 1920 and with Prohibition about to go into effect, it's great to be a gangster. Bootlegging becomes a very lucrative business and Tom & Matt become a salesmen (enforcers) for the mob, becoming very wealthy men in the process.
Tom tells his mother he's working in politics but Mike, now back from the war, knows better.
Tom has a hair trigger temper and is prone to sudden violent outbursts.
When he encounters a thug who double crossed him when he was a kid, Tom doesn't hesitate to shoot the thug. Tom can hold on to a grudge.
A girlfriend getting on Tom's nerves at the breakfast table gets a grapefruit shoved in her face.
When a gang war escalates is his friend Matt is shot down in the streets, Tom plunges into the gang's hideout alone and kills a whole bunch of the gang before Tom himself is riddled with bullets.
Tom barely survives but laid up in a hospital, he is completely helpless to prevent being kidnapped by the surviving gang members.
At Tom's mother's house, his brother Mike takes delivery of a package, bound up in paper and rope like a delivery from a butcher's shop: the corpse of Tom Powers.
And so ends the tale of The Public Enemy.
James Cagney establishes the template of the tough guy gangster whose unfettered greed and uncontrolled passions of lust and rage are his ultimate undoing. Joe Pesci in Good Fellas owes a debt to the path laid out by Cagney in The Public Enemy.
There's a lot about The Public Enemy that would not fly once the Hays Code took effect.
A gangster as the protagonist.
The infamous "grapefruit to the face" scene would not have passed the code.
Tom Powers pays the price for his violent criminal lifestyle but not at the hands of the law but at the hands of other gangsters, something Hays Code would not have permitted.
A lot about The Public Enemy may seem cliched, the bog standard story of the rough and tumble kid who sees a life of crime as a viable way up in the world only to meet a violent end.
But this was from 1931 and James Cagney and director William A. Wellman were doing this first and everyone since has been trying to emulate this movie.
Speaking of William A. Wellman, he also directed the 2nd film in today's post, a movie that really left me floored by the depths of despair and depravity on display.
That movie from 1931 is called Safe in Hell and this one is kind of brutal, y'all.
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| The French poster for Safe In Hell |
Gilda Karlson (Dorothy Mackaill) is a New Orleans prostitute accused of murdering a customer named Piet Van Saal. Piet was the man who got Gilda fired from her former job as a secretary and leading her into prostitution.
Carl Erickson, Gilda's old boyfriend and a sailor, smuggles her to safety to Tortuga, a Caribbean island with no extradition treaty with the United States.
Carl has some sailor stuff he has to attend to but promises he will be back and they will be together. Gilda promises to behave herself and stay faithful to Carl.
Gilda finds herself to be the only white woman in a hotel full of international criminals, all of whom try to seduce her.
Especially persistent is Mr. Bruno who describes himself as Tortuga's "jailer and executioner".
Bruno intercepts Carl's letters and money he sends to support Gilda. Gilda becomes distressed over this lack of communication from Carl. Bruno gives her a gun for her protection even though he said before that there are no guns allowed on the island.
Then guess who the fuck shows up but Piet Van Saal. He faked his death, collected half a million in life insurance and fled to Tortuga to escape his wife. Gilda is relieved that she no longer has to hide for committing a murder when the victim isn't dead.
Gilda's not so relieved when Piet Van Saal attempts to rape her. She uses the gun Bruno gave her to shoot. OK, NOW he's dead for real and NOW she's the one who did it.
Gilda is put on trial for murder in a Tortuga court but it looks like the jury is inclined to acquit her since it was self-defense.
But then Bruno drops the boom on Gilda: even if she is found innocent of murder, he will arrest her for violating the island's strict "no gun" policy, the sentence for which is 6 months in a prison camp where Bruno assures Gilda life will be quite comfortable and her only obligation is to have sex with Bruno every damn day.
To escape having Bruno rape her every day for 6 months, Gilda rushes into the courtroom to confess that the murder of Piet Van Saal was not self-defense but was a premeditated cold blooded killing.
Gilda is found guilty and sentence to death by hanging.
The movie ends (I am not making this up) with Gilda being led to (this is really how the movie ends) the gallows by Bruno (God damn if!) to be hanged as the music swells and we see those two big words THE END on the screen and I'm all...
What the unholy fuck?!?!?
REALLY?!?!
There's a LOT about Safe In Hell that would not have passed the Hays Code if it was made after 1934.
Gilda is a prostitute. There are no coy sly euphemisms. It is very clear she has sex with men for money.
The persistent threat of sexual violence that Gilda is under on Tortuga would've been prohibited by the code. Even before Piet Van Saal tries to rape her and Bruno threatens to do so for over a 6 month time frame, the constant leering stares from the men in the hotel where Gilda is holed up make it clear they are not interested in her for her wit and conversational skills.
The uncompromising corruption of Bruno is not something that the code would've allowed. Yeah, movies were made under the code with cops on the take and what not but those persons were balanced with good cops engendering respect for authority. Bruno is cast as the sole law enforcement authority with no redeeming values at all.
Gilda faces death for a crime she did not technically commit. Yeah, she killed Piet but it was in self defense, it was not premeditated murder. The code would've definitely had some objections to that.
Gilda dressed for her day (night) on the job as a prostitute?
The Motion Picture Production Code would've said no to that.
Safe In Hell is an unrelentingly bleak movie and I am so distressed by that ending.
But I gotta give props to director William A. Wellman who gets us to that ending with an uncompromising vision and style.
Next week, Cinema Sunday explores the pre-Code era with not one, not two but THREE movies.
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