genre
Gangster film Genre
Reading number one-Developed around the sinister actions of criminals, gangsters, particularly bank robbers and underworld figures who operate outside of the law stealing and murdering their way through life.
Crime stories in this genre usually highlight the rise and fall of one of these leading individuals. And the personal power struggle between these gangster and officials of the law.
Gangster films are usually set in large crowded cities, to provide a view of the secrets of the criminals world
Film gangsters are usually very street smart, immoral, materialistic, and self destructive
Hays Censorship Codes of the 1930’s, the Hays Office was whom wrote these codes, forced studios particularly after 1934 to make moral pronouncements, pronounce criminals as psychopaths, de-glorify crime and show that crime doesn’t pay. It also demanded minimal details for brutal crimes.
Before this time there was no code on what could and couldn’t be shown during films
The code was largely adhered to during the 1930’s and 1960’s
Film site.org
Criminal/gangster films date back to the early days of film during the silent era
One of the first to mark the start of the gangster/crime genre was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) about organized crime. It wasn't the first gangster movie ever made, but it was the first significant gangster film that has survived.
Josef von Sternberg's gangland melodrama Underworld (1927) with George Bancroft and Clive Brook, often considered as the first modern gangster film, had many standard conventions of the crime film - and it was shot from the gangster's point of view. It won the Best Original Story Award for Ben Hecht - the first Oscar ever awarded for an original screenplay, and the first of Hecht's two Oscar wins (among six writing nominations during his career). [The first 'gangster' pulp had the same title, Underworld, a breeding ground for many crime thriller plots.]
It wasn't until the
Reading number one-Developed around the sinister actions of criminals, gangsters, particularly bank robbers and underworld figures who operate outside of the law stealing and murdering their way through life.
Crime stories in this genre usually highlight the rise and fall of one of these leading individuals. And the personal power struggle between these gangster and officials of the law.
Gangster films are usually set in large crowded cities, to provide a view of the secrets of the criminals world
Film gangsters are usually very street smart, immoral, materialistic, and self destructive
Hays Censorship Codes of the 1930’s, the Hays Office was whom wrote these codes, forced studios particularly after 1934 to make moral pronouncements, pronounce criminals as psychopaths, de-glorify crime and show that crime doesn’t pay. It also demanded minimal details for brutal crimes.
Before this time there was no code on what could and couldn’t be shown during films
The code was largely adhered to during the 1930’s and 1960’s
Film site.org
Criminal/gangster films date back to the early days of film during the silent era
One of the first to mark the start of the gangster/crime genre was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) about organized crime. It wasn't the first gangster movie ever made, but it was the first significant gangster film that has survived.
Josef von Sternberg's gangland melodrama Underworld (1927) with George Bancroft and Clive Brook, often considered as the first modern gangster film, had many standard conventions of the crime film - and it was shot from the gangster's point of view. It won the Best Original Story Award for Ben Hecht - the first Oscar ever awarded for an original screenplay, and the first of Hecht's two Oscar wins (among six writing nominations during his career). [The first 'gangster' pulp had the same title, Underworld, a breeding ground for many crime thriller plots.]
It wasn't until the