A Film Canon

The most elegaic 1930s gangster film, The Roaring Twenties is also the first to fully periodise gangsterdom, using it as a synecdoche for the brief respite between the end of WWI and the Great Depression - a respite that is ultimately figured in terms of an ongoing war, continuous with the contemporary crisis. This transforms the gangster into a mythological, larger-than-life figure - a "big shot" - capable of succeeding where military and diplomatic prowess have failed, but by now too entrenched in the past to do so, suffusing the film with the melancholy that comes from contemplating the previous generation, just close enough to render its distance all the more tangible. Hence the refrain - "Come To Me, My Melancholy Baby" - directed at protagonist Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), who is more rational, restrained and ethical than any previous gangster, only entering the bootlegging business out of sheer necessity, and refraining from most of its excesses - especially drinking. Similarly, the mileux peculiar to the gangster film (speakeasy, nightclub, gambling den) are stripped of much of their depravity, and provided with a counterpoint in the form of love interest Jean Sherman's (Priscilla Lane) bucolic Long Island home, while gangsterdom itself is indistinguishable from charismatic business. The one exception is sidekick George Hally (Humphrey Bogart), whose meanness and cowardice just clarify Bartlett's generosity and bravery, and whose violent, categorical comeuppance paves the way for a conclusion that subtly quotes and revises Little Caesar.