Would you feel sympathy for a cold-blooded murderer? Certain types of crime seem more glamorous than others. Gangsters from the 1920s and ‘30s, particularly in Chicago, were celebrities in their own day, and they remain icons of the Prohibition era. Hollywood capitalized on the notoriety of gangsters by making them leading men in films and portraying them with popular stars. The Warner Bros. studio was most associated with this genre, making most of the major gangster films in the 1930s.
The gangster genre began shortly after the movies learned to talk, around 1930. It flourished during the early part of the decade at the height of the Great Depression, a chapter of Hollywood history that is now called the Pre-Code Era.
In July 1934, the Production Code Administration (PCA) was founded to give the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (or Hays Code) a strong means of enforcement. This code instilled American movies with a strong sense of morality and restraint, producing two decades of wholesome, pure entertainment.
However, movies made before the PCA formed remain shocking examples of the depravity of which early Hollywood was capable. Pre-Code gangster films are a big part of this.
A Powerful Emotion
Sympathy is defined as “a feeling of compassion for another.” Sympathy implies not only a tender concern, but also a power to enter into another’s emotional experience. It is both possible and very easy to feel sympathy for fictional characters when they are dramatically brought to life on the silver screen.
‘Nice’ Gangsters
The natural sympathy that one feels for someone down-and-out can be used by others in harmful ways. The most harmful and Pre-Codish element of the typical gangster film is not its violence or its prurience, but its portrayal of crime and criminals. In most gangster films, such as “The Public Enemy” from 1931, crime is presented as glamorous, exciting, and profitable, and not an act of last resort in desperate times like the Great Depression.
The first gangster movie, “The Doorway to Hell” (1930), presents crime as justified and criminals as inherently decent men. This could produce the bizarre notion that a cold-blooded murderer like Louie Ricarno, played by a heartbreakingly youthful Lew Ayres, is not evil.
The Code Pushes Back
The gangster genre did not end with the Pre-Code Era. Some of its most famous entries were released at the end of the decade, such as “Angels With Dirty Faces” (1938) and “The Roaring Twenties” (1939). However, it had to change some of its questionable concepts before being accepted as Code-compliant cinema. Naturally, the violence had to be toned down, and the blatantly immoral scenarios with gun molls could only be implied.
The biggest difference in these films was their moral tone and their treatment of criminals versus the law. In Code gangster films, the audience may sympathize with the circumstances that brought a criminal to his lawless lifestyle, but they always feel that he is doing the wrong thing. To contrast the public enemy’s evil actions, a strong voice of righteousness and morality is usually included in Code gangster films, offering viewers a strong picture of good versus evil.
It’s plain to see how Hollywood’s methods for wrongfully evoking sympathy was so effective in early gangster films. Hollywood magic makes viewers feel sympathetic toward a gangster after the film has ended by making him seem sweet and pathetic right before he is killed, effectively martyring him.
Unfortunately, gangster characters in the Pre-Code Era have not lost their power to evoke the audience’s sympathy. Pushing back on this trend, Code gangster movies ensured that poverty-stricken Americans were never tempted to forget that criminals are the bad guys.
