The Guilty Generation

Some parts of this movie have not survived seventy-five years well, and at times the dialogue limps. Robert Young, as the young lover, speaks in a voice that is annoying in the high register. Constance Cummings is a beautiful young woman and a good actor. Boris Karloff handles his rather small role gracefully, with just an air of lurking menace.

But it is Leo Carrillo, who begins the movie looking like a buffoon and ends the movie as a terrible monster, who owns this movie. I won't give away any details, but the ending, once you realize its inevitability, is a real shocker.

Does Carrillo's performance make the movie worth seeing? Yes, although just barely, and you may need a bit of patience until the movie is worthwhile, but perhaps the mobile camera-work will keep you interested.

While it is true that this interesting crime drama has a few significant "holes" in it -- like casting Boris Karloff with his crisp enunciations as an Italian-immigrant mobster -- the film stands as a persuasive cultural document indicting the whole Prohibition Era. For those who do not know anything about our true American history, there was about fifty-two years of social agitation behind what was known as The Temperance Movement, culminating in a Constitutional amendment and "the Volstead Act." In a curious tandem movement, the long-running "Suffrage" movement for women to have the vote became intertwined and then interlocked with "Temperance." What began as a local issue, restricting or banning the sale of alcoholic beverages at a time when nearly all adult men drank beer, whiskey or gin, eventually morphed into statewide legislation. The problem was complex, however, as "dry counties" competed with "wet counties" inside of states, and then across state boundaries, as dry states conflicted with wet states.

When Congress proposed the "Prohibition" amendment in December of 1917, the country had been involved in the Declared War that T. Woodrow Wilson campaigned against in his 1916 re-election bid, since April of '17. As tens of thousands of U.S. troops were training for and shipping out for the battlefields of France, where they would learn to enjoy French wines, cognac and champagnes, their Congress was moving to provide Prohibition of drinking alcohol from sea to shining sea. The amendment as proposed achieved ratification on January 29th of 1919 and its provisions took effect one year later.

Thirteen years and twenty-one days later, Congress moved to repeal the Prohibition Amendment and this counter-amendment was ratified by December of 1933, or nine months into the new administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In those thirteen years and nine months, the structure and integrity of American society was wholly changed and radicalized. Minor criminal gangs in the major cities blossomed into full-fledged crime syndicates, as the taste for liquor and beer among the people wholly overwhelmed the legal reality of Prohibition.

Thus, the "Roaring '20s" was a time when stock market speculations and easy money rode the same horses as did "bootlegging" or the illegal importation or illegal manufacture of beer and hard liquors ... in every part of the country. Thousands of men -- and some women and children -- were killed in the revolving battles between bootlegging gangs in the major cities, and the violence only got worse as the profits from "speakeasy" saloons and "rum-running" grew larger and larger. Municipalities and county governments were suborned. Governors were bribed, and Customs officials bought or intimidated into silence.

The background of this movie is that history: the two gangs, seeming to be from Chicago although not specifically mentioned as such, are the Ricca and the Palmero, whose leaders were formerly partners and whose families were formerly friends.

As the movie unfolds, the violence between the gangs escalates into killing each others' operatives, each others' cousins, and then each man's sons. And against this hideous background, even if played at a lower key, the daughter of Palmero meets and falls in love with the second son of Ricca, who has been raised abroad and who has changed his name to "Smith." No, it's not "Romeo & Juliet" at all but there are some similarities.

Others have commented on how this fledgling romance comes across as being "sappy" or syrupy. That's right. But that's what movie going audiences wanted in the middle of the early years of the Depression. The violence described in this film is not shown specifically, but it lurks in the shadows like a Kabuki puppet.

Leo Carrillo and Boris Karloff do very well in their roles, and the absence of any background music makes this film more intensely visual, although there are scenes where music is played in a club or for a party. The lavish life style of the Palmero family, in their Florida mansion, is another element in the fictional "testament" of just how warped the social order of the United States had become under Prohibition, and under the tyranny of these petit-princes of the Prohibition Era.

'The Guilty Generation' has a misleading title. This movie would seem to indict a generation, but it's actually more interested in indicting an ethnic group ... to be precise, the Italians. This movie takes place in a universe where everyone named Angelo or Luigi is automatically a gangster. Late in the film, there's some brief dialogue about honest Italians vilifying the crooked members of their 'race' ... but most of this movie seems to indicate that Italian ancestry and criminal behaviour are mutually inclusive.

Robert Young is a rising young architect named John Smith, a name guaranteed to attract attention. Indeed, we soon find out that he was born Marco Ricca, son of gangster Tony Ricca. The latter is played by Boris Karloff, looking not remotely Italian. (Although Italian-American actor Abe Vigoda was a Karloff lookalike.) Karloff brings deep conviction and presence to this role, but his performance is not very convincing. Part of the problem is that Tony Ricca's dialogue is full of "ain't"s and other grammatical errors, yet Karloff speaks these thick-eared lines in his usual cultured tones. Elsewhere, Murray Kinnell is good in a supporting role, but his well-bred English accent seems out of place in a setting that's knee-deep in goombahs.

There are excellent performances by two actors unknown to me, Emma Dunn and Elliott Rothe. Also impressive is Leo Carrillo. Because of his short stature and thick accent, Carrillo is best known for comic roles. Here, he's chillingly believable as a crime lord, utterly ruthless and unforgiving. Much of the film takes place in the sumptuous Florida mansion owned by Carrillo's character. I was astounded that Columbia Pictures -- at this point, a studio barely out of Poverty Row -- were able to achieve these production values.

Also quite good, in a supporting role, is Ruth Warren as Carrillo's press agent. Unfortunately, Warren was precisely the same character type as several other better-known and better actresses -- Jean Dixon and Glenda Farrell spring to mind -- so she failed to claim a niche for herself among Hollywood's character actresses. As the romantic leads in this melange, Robert Young and the insipid Constance Cummings are as dull as dishwater. I've never yet seen a performance by Cummings that impressed me.

'The Guilty Generation', well-directed by the underrated Rowland V Lee, and nicely photographed by Byron Haskin, is probably of greatest interest to Karloff fans. Be advised that Karloff's role is actually quite small, and he's miscast. Overall, I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10.

So, let's pretend you are a Hollywood producer back in 1931 and you are planning on making a movie about mobsters--Italian mobsters to be precise. So, for the roles of mobsters and family members of the Ricca and Palmero family, who would you pick? Well, unless you were insane, you probably wouldn't pick the British Boris Karloff, Hispanic-American Leo Carrillo or the Waspy Constance Cummings or Robert Young. And, oddly, these are exactly the actors chosen for this film that is a bit like "Little Caesar" and "Romeo & Juliet" merged into one. The only one in the cast that came off as Italian was the English actress Emma Dunn--now SHE seemed like she was cast well as she sounded Italian and was quite effective. Now I am NOT saying that the others were bad--they just didn't seem very Italian.

The film begins with nice-guy Young getting a surprise visit from his dad (Karloff). It seems Karloff is hurt because his architect son has changed his name and wants nothing to do with the family business of killing people and selling bathtub booze. But, despite his charming personality, Young is determined to make it on his own and tells his father to leave.

A bit later, the film shifts to another unhappy child of a different gangster. It seems that Constance wants to be accepted by high society but her thug brother and father (Carrillo) make it really tough. When she throws a fancy party, the brother starts acting tough by throwing people into the pool. When Young stops him, the brother is about to shoot him! Nice family, huh?! Well, it seems that Young knew Cummings when they were kids. This, combined with their angst about their mob families makes their falling in love natural...except the two fathers are rivals bent on killing each other as well as wiping out the other's family! As a result, the Romeo & Juliet angle enters into this fateful romance.

Overall, this is a low-budget but entertaining film from Columbia. It's well worth seeing and a nice reworking of Shakespeare--minus all the olde tyme dialog. However, for fans of Karloff, be forewarned that he's really not in the film that much and I assume he was billed as high as he was due to his recent appearance in "Frankenstein". Regardless, it's a tough little film that I enjoyed.

The performances by Leo Carrillo, Constance Cummings, Robert Young and Leslie Fenton make compelling entertainment out of this rather routinely mounted drama about the social hardships faced by the grown children of successful Italian-American gangsters. While they live in the splendor of their parents' ill-gotten gains they remain social pariahs and must go to great lengths to achieve respectable lives.

Cummings and Young are a sort of Romeo and Juliet, offspring of rival criminal kingpins Carrillo and Karloff, respectively, who fall in love. Carrillo is quite scary as a cold-blooded hoodlum, but Karloff can't get the accent right and sounds awkwardly British, and bearing no resemblance of any kind to Robert Young doesn't help. Leslie Fenton as Carrillo's dissolute son does a good job playing nasty, particularly in a well-shot scene that has him rampaging through a garden party and knocking guest after fully clothed guest into the pool.