Gangster Film Analysis

Hollywood entered a new phase with the coming of sound movies in 1927 and it was also chronicled as the golden decade for the crime film, with the flourishing of two classical genres-gangster film and prison film. The gangster films echoed the financial predicaments of many ordinary Americans during the Great Depression, and in doing so it influences the succeeding genres. Gangster films connected criminality with economic hardship and portrayed gangsters as underdogs. They soothed the financially struggling Americans and at the same time attacked crime and the government’s inability to control it. Prison films also had its root in silent films which became popular in the 1930s, left the audience cheering for the “wrong side” (Rafter 20).