James Cagney made something of an early career for himself in gangster movies. His fast-talking, tough guy routine worked out very well though he had other gifts, most notably being a very talented song-and-dance man. However, everyone has to get their start somewhere, and Cagney got his first starring role with The Public Enemy.
Yes, this is the one where he smashes a grapefruit into a woman’s face. It’s one of those cinematic moments that somehow have stayed in the public consciousness. But what about the rest of the movie around that moment?
The film opens around the turn of the 20th century as young Tom Powers is already well on his way towards a life of crime. Hanging out with his pal Matt, even as a boy a pattern emerges: Tom does something shifty, his good older brother Mike objects, and Tom just doesn’t care. It probably doesn’t help that his policeman father seems inclined to spank him good. Tom grows up to become Cagney, and from there, we see his descent into a criminal underworld, going from smalltime crook to bigtime bootlegger. His father may be dead and gone, but his brother Mike (Donald Cook) continues to be the good brother, going off to fight in the first World War and coming back with a chest full of medals.
That more or less establishes the pattern for the movie. Tom does something illegal and awful with Matt (Edward Woods) standing nearby, and since the two killed a cop for their first real caper as adults, these aren’t really open for redemption, not in a movie from the 30s. And then Tom will go home to see his mother (Beryl Mercer), a woman who seems to have no clue what her younger son does, where he will inevitably butt heads with Mike, sometimes getting a little physical. At the end of the movie, a severely wounded Tom promises his family he will redeem himself after a gang war, only to be kidnapped and presumably die off screen.
This one is a real star-making turn for Cagney, and he made the most of it. Director William A. Wellman recognized that Cagney moved and spoke in a rhythm befitting a man trained for musicals and he and his star used that. The end result is Cagney stands out more than his various co-stars. Screen acting was still evolving in those days, so subtly wasn’t really a thing. Cagney’s style of speaking made his bad boy gangster, already the sort of character that gets an audience’s attention, even more distinctive. Tom Powers doesn’t have any redeemable qualities, aside from maybe caring for his mother, but Cagney is still magnetic for his time.
Much like the original Scarface, the movie begins and ends with title cards imploring the audience to know that characters like Tom are real and need to be stopped. This sort of stuff was almost certainly added to address censorship concerns, but being a fan of 70s style antiheroes, these notes sure do seem quaint compared to the likes of, say, the entire filmography of men like Martin Scorsese or Brian DePalma. Just thinking about something like Taxi Driver or the more recent Scarface having those sorts of messages just seems rather silly to me. As for The Public Enemy, it sure does seem to be a glimpse in the naughtiest behavior that 1930s movie studios would dare to present to audiences. The gangster film has come a long way since 1931, including the requirement that villains pay for their crimes one way or the other, and checking out the roots of any genre when done well is always a worthwhile endeavor, even if those “bad guy pays in the end” endings seem a little tacked on to simply appease some sort of moral watchdog.
Grade: B+
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