See Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture, Complete, Free, and without Commercial Interruptions, at WEJB/NSU!

Re-posted by N.S.

The first gangster pictures, to my knowledge, were von Harbou and Lang’s two-part, four-hour, 1922 Dr. Mabuse epic, Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart), with English subtitles, shot and initially released in Weimar Germany, both of which can be screened right here.

The essay on this picture below was excerpted by the poster from the pretend encyclopedia, with light editing and commentary by yours truly. Note, however, that many entries about classic movie figures at pretend have yet to be perverted by pretend’s racial socialist Gauleiter.

Underworld (1927) George Bancroft, Clive Brook & Evelyn Brent | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir | B&W





Underworld (1927) George Bancroft, Clive Brook & Evelyn Brent | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir | B&W

“Underworld (also released as Paying the Penalty) is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg, and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, and George Bancroft. The film launched von Sternberg’s eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story.Underworld (1927) George Bancroft, Clive Brook & Evelyn Brent | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir | B&W

“SYNOPSIS

“boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.

“boisterous gangster kingpin ‘Bull’ Weed rehabilitates the down-and-out ‘Rolls Royce’ Wensel, a former lawyer who has fallen into alcoholism. the two become confidants, with Rolls Royce’s intelligence aiding Weed’s schemes, but complications arise when Rolls Royce falls for Weed’s girlfriend, ‘Feathers’ McCoy.

“adding to Weed’s troubles are attempts by a rival gangster, ‘Buck’ Mulligan, to muscle in on his territory. their antagonism climaxes with Weed killing Mulligan, for which he is imprisoned. awaiting a death sentence, Rolls Royce devises an escape plan, but he and Feathers face a dilemma, wondering if they should elope together and leave Bull Weed to his fate.

“CAST & CREW

George Bancroft as Bull Weed
Evelyn Brent as Feather's McCoy
Clive Brook as Rolls Royce Wensel

Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Written by Ben Hecht, Charles Furthman, Robert N. Lee
Produced by Hector Turnbull, B. P. Schulberg [Schulberg was the chief at Paramount.]
Cinematography Bert Glennon
Edited by E. Lloyd Sheldon

Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date August 20, 1927
Running time 80 minutes
Country United States
Language Silent (English intertitles)

NOTES

“Underworld is based on a story by Ben Hecht, a former chicago crime reporter, and adapted for screenplay by Robert N. Lee with titles by George Marion Jr. it was produced by B. P. Schulberg and Hector Turnbull with cinematography by Bert Glennon and edited by E. Lloyd Sheldon. Sternberg completed Underworld in a record-setting five weeks.

[N.S.: That’s hardly “record-setting.” With little dialogue, silents could routinely be shot in a fraction of the time that talkies would consume .]

“the gangster role played by George Bancroft was modeled on ‘Terrible’ Tommy O'Connor, an Irish mobster who gunned down Chicago Police Chief Padraig O'Neil in 1923 but escaped three days before execution, and was never apprehended.

“Paramount Pictures, initially cool towards the production, predicted the film would fail. initial release was limited to only one theater, the New York Paramount. the studio did not provide advance publicity. writer Ben Hecht requested (unsuccessfully) to have his name taken off the credits, due to the dismal prospects for the film.

“contrary to studio expectations, the public response to the New York screening was so positive that Paramount arranged for round-the-clock showings at the Paramount Theatre to ‘accommodate the unexpected crowds that flocked to the attraction. time felt the film was realistic in some parts, but disliked the Hollywood cliché of turning an evil character’s heart to gold at the end.

“Sternberg has been credited with ‘launching the gangster film genre.’ critic Andrew Sarris cautioned that Underworld is ‘less a proto-gangster film than a pre-gangster film’ in which the criminal world of the Prohibition Era provides a backdrop for a tragic tale of a ‘Byronic hero’ destroyed, not by ‘the avenging forces of law and order’ but by the eternal vicissitudes of ‘love, faith and falsehood.

“journalist Ben Hecht’s influence appears in the phony flower shop operation and killing of ‘Bull’ Weed’s archenemy, ‘florist’ Buck Mulligan, evoking the 1922 real-life murder of kingpin Dean O’Banion by the Johnny Torrio mob. funeral hearses also abound in the film, notorious as capacious conveyances used to conceal criminal activities and personnel in chicago. despite these contemporary references, Underworld does not qualify as ‘the first gangster film’ as Sternberg ‘showed little interest in the purely gangsterish aspects of the genre’ nor the ‘mechanics of [mob] power.’ rather than invoking contemporary social forces and inequities, Sternberg’s ‘Bull’ Weed is subject to ‘implacable fate,’ much as the heroes of classical antiquity. the female companions to the outlaws are less gangster molls, addicted to violent men, than protagonists in their own right, who induce ‘revenge and redemption.’ the genre would only be properly established in such film classics as Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932), High Sierra (1941), White Heat (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and The Killing (1956).”

[N.S.: Forget The Killing which, as I recall, was a re-make of The Asphalt Jungle. (You never re-make a picture with the star of the original! Sterling Hayden starred in Asphalt and Killing! When Sam Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch (1969), he ripped off both The Professionals (1966) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Peckinpah wanted Lee Marvin to star in Bunch. Thank God, Marvin was booked for the time, or Bunch would have failed, with people constantly comparing it with The Professionals. Peckinpah was “forced,” instead, to hire Bill Holden as star, and Holden delivered one of his greatest performances as “Pike Bishop,” in what would become his comeback vehicle. How did Peckinpah know the script of Butch & Sundance, a project which had begun much earlier than Bunch? Easy. In Hollywood, everyone sleeps with each other.]

Besides which, the gangster film genre had been “established” long before 1950. However, it is unforgivable to leave off of any list of the greatest gangster pictures the Cagney masterpieces, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and The Roaring Twenties (1939).]

“Film critic Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader in 2014, rates Underworld as one of the great gangster films of the silent era.”

The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1902-1981:

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton's One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): See the Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948); and

https://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2023/11/there-are-eight-million-stories-in.html>Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music; and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981).