Crime and Gangster Films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or gangsters, particularly bankrobbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and violently murdering their way through life. In the 1940s, a new type of crime thriller emerged, more dark and cynical - see the section on film-noir for further examples of crime films. Criminal and gangster films are often categorized as post-war film noir or detective-mystery films - because of underlying similarities between these cinematic forms.
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. There were other one-reel 'gangster' films before Griffith's film, such as Biograph's The Moonshiners (1904), Edwin S. Porter's and Wallace McCutcheon's primitive chase film A Desperate Encounter Between Burglars And Police (1905), and McCutcheon's docu-melodrama kidnapping story The Black Hand (1906), but their importance or availability have been problematic.
It wasn't until the sound era and the 1930s that gangster films truly became an entertaining, popular way to attract viewers to the theatres, who were interested in the lawlessness and violence on-screen. The events of the Prohibition Era (until 1933) such as bootlegging and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, the existence of real-life gangsters (e.g., Al Capone) and the rise of contemporary organized crime and escalation of urban violence helped to encourage this genre. Many of the sensationalist plots of the early gangster films were taken from the day's newspaper headlines. The allied rackets of bootlegging, gambling and prostitution brought these mobsters to folk hero status, and audiences during that time vicariously participated in the gangster's rise to power and wealth - on the big screen. They vicariously experienced the gangster's satisfaction with flaunting the system and feeling the thrill of violence. Movies flaunted the archetypal exploits of swaggering, cruel, wily, tough, and law-defying bootleggers and urban gangsters.
The talkies era accounted for the rise of crime films, because these films couldn't come to life without sound (machine gun fire, screeching brakes, screams, chases through city streets and squealing car tires). The perfection of sound technology and mobile cameras also aided their spread. The first "100% all-talking" picture and, of course, the first sound gangster film was The Lights of New York (1928) - it enhanced the urban crime dramas of the time with crackling dialogue and exciting sound effects of squealing getaway car tires and gunshots. Rouben Mamoulian's City Streets (1931) from a story penned by Dashiell Hammett was reportedly Al Capone's favorite film, starring Gary Cooper and Sylvia Sydney as two lovers trapped by gangland connections. And Tay Garnett's violent Bad Company (1931) was the first picture to feature the gangland massacre on St. Valentine's Day.
Other highly dramatic films in the crime genre are actually a subgenre - the prison crime film. These are focused on the regimented setting for criminals - the prison and life behind bars. Prison films have portrayed the tremendous impact prison life has on prisoners as well as on wardens and guards. They are often populated by vindictive wardens, innocent men wrongly imprisoned, or stool-pigeons. Themes have also included methods of evasion, attempts to escape or prove innocence, social consciousness and concern about the prison system, and the death-row experience.
As stated earlier, as the decade of the 40s and the post-war period emerged, crime films became darker, more brutal, violent, and cynical -- many crime/gangster films were actually film noirs. After World War II, gangsters were often businessmen who represented large and corrupt corporations (often anonymous). The first film to illustrate changes in the character of gangsters after WWII was Byron Haskin's I Walk Alone (1948). Burt Lancaster took the role of Frankie Madison, an ex-con who faced a changed world and a double-cross by his partner after his release from 14 years in prison. He learned that Noll 'Dink' Turner (Kirk Douglas) was now a pseudo-legitimate and respectable, high-flying Manhattan night-club owner/racketeer, unwilling to share in bootlegging profits from an earlier promise (Turner: "This is big business. We deal with banks, lawyers, and a Dunn and Bradstreet rating. The world's spun right past you, Frank.")
1970s films showed the untiring, violent and abusive counter tactics of detectives fighting crime including William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971), with two narcotics detectives (Gene Hackman as Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and Roy Scheider as Buddy Russo) facing an international narcotics smuggling ring. [Two semi-sequels or follow-up films also emphasized tough and violent police tactics: director Phil D'Antoni's The Seven-Ups (1973), with Scheider in the lead role as a tough NYC police department investigator, and Badge 373 (1973), with Robert Duvall as an avenging cop.] Director John Frankenheimer's official sequel French Connection II (1975) resumed the tracking of drug dealers in Marseilles by Doyle.
In the early 90s, young screenwriter Quentin Tarantino made his debut film as writer and director. He turned toward directing his own scripts set in the unusual, volatile world of the criminal element. His own directorial debut for a feature film, after having others direct his scripts for True Romance (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994), was for the ultra-violent crime thriller Reservoir Dogs (1992) - in which six thieving strangers were assembled to conduct a diamont heist that unraveled rapidly in the aftermath. Afterwards, he perfected his mix of humor and ultra-violence in the popular, critically-acclaimed film Pulp Fiction (1994), a complex interweaving of three crime stories.
It may be argued that the best genre match for 'serial killer' films is the horror genre or thriller films category, but they could also be categorized within this area of crime films. Early horror films (including the Dracula and Frankenstein cycles), various pieces of Gothic literature and accounts of real-life killers have all been sources of inspiration for these films. They are noted as cinematic productions that feature a psychopathic, mass murderer/killer (not known as a 'serial killer' until the 1980s) on a homicidal spree. Within the last decade or two, most horror films with a mass murderer have deteriorated into slasher films or erotic dramas/mysteries, characterized by random killings by a maniacal individual.
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