The Public Enemy (1932)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) At times, it can be fascinating to go back in history to see how the modern shape of cinema came together—how the elements we now take for granted were assembled over decades of small refinements and audience reactions to various experiments. It’s obvious that The Public Enemy is a formative work of crime movies—it’s often mentioned in histories of the genre, and even casual cinephiles are likely to have encountered critical commentary about James Cagney’s prominence in gangster movies of the 1930s. The Public Enemy is framed as a semi-realistic depiction of gangster activity at a time when America was still hungover from Prohibition and pre-Code cinema was trying to figure out the balance between good taste and audience thrills. As such, it’s definitely intriguing—you can see when the filmmakers are trying to get a rise out of the audience (hence the domestic abuse scene featuring a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face, still as shocking now as it was then), but also how they ensured that the criminals repented and were punished for their actions. This being said, it hasn’t always aged particularly well, even though its filmmaking techniques were decent for the time and director William A. Wellman used a number of unusual shots. It’s not the film’s fault—it’s that we’re used now to what was novel and exciting then. If you’re watching The Public Enemy for entertainment rather than cinema history, don’t be surprised to find it a tepid viewing at best, and at worst kind of dull.