The Gangster

Occasionally Allied Artists was able to produce a first rate serious film unrelated to their usual formularized output.'The Gangster' is an unconventional crime picture that concentrates on the latter end of a racketeer's career,the effects rather than the causes of his persona,his neighborhood of operations,and the people who have been corrupted by his contact. As the protagonist Barry Sullivan essays a suitably morose,hardened individual driven by desperation to hold onto his rapidly crumbling kingdom.Desperate too are the pathetic bystanders who will be effected if this petty prince of rackets should fall to the machinations of a rival mob.Belita is a fashion socialite whom Sullivan uses but cannot love.Akim Tamiroff is terrific as the owner of a seemingly innocuous ice-cream parlor where Sullivan's influence has set in motion the tragic events that follow.Also well-cast are Joan Lorring as an adoring counter girl,John Ireland as a hooked gambler,Harry Morgan as an amusing soda-jerk,and every film buff's "favorite" New York thug,Sheldon Leonard as the leader of the new mob organization.

Belying the promise of tommyguns and bootleg hooch implied in its title, The Gangster instead unfolds as a patch of doomed urban poetry. Its script, by Daniel Fuchs from his novel Low Company (with, it's said, a hand from Dalton Trumbo), looks down loftily and detachedly at a handful of "little" people in a day-trippers' seaside resort way out in Brooklyn. Each character is a gear meshing precisely with other gears in a clockwork plot perhaps better suited to footlights than the kick-lights of film noir.

But its milieu and aspirations remain decidedly -- ostentatiously -- noir, from the baroque, shadowed ironwork of the El to the nighttime cloudbursts over the littered pavements. A soda fountain serves as the drama's central "set" into which self-styled racket kingpin Barry Sullivan frequently drops to flash his cufflinks. He's unable to confront the fact that his tiny crime empire is under siege and crumbling; he's too obsessed with his stage-struck mistress (Belita). Blind with jealousy and bloated with delusions of his invulnerability, he drifts impassively, almost catatonically, toward the fate that's already been meted out for him (the dramaturgy brings to mind Periclean Athens or Elizabethan London).

An unusually starry cast of noir players inhabits The Gangster, many in no more than walk-ons. Among them: Akim Tamiroff as the drugstore proprietor and Sullivan's partner; Harry Morgan as a soda jerk and Joan Lorring as cashier; Fifi D'Orsay, in an inexplicable role; John Ireland and Virginia Christine as a compulsive gambler and his despairing wife; Sheldon Leonard as Sullivan's predatory nemesis; Elisha Cook, Jr. and Charles McGraw as (what else?) thugs; even an uncredited Shelley Winters, fixing her face.

Plainly, there's a lot to admire in The Gangster, from the stagily constructed neighborhood to Louis Gruenman's melodramatic score. The trouble is that all the admirable bits and pieces don't quite jell into the organic flow of vital cinema, and the purple passages don't ring true as the street lingo of a raffish backwater called Neptune Beach.

The Gangster, a raw, bitter portrait of a racketeer. Shubunka is the self-made head of the rackets in the sleazy boardwalk community of Neptune City, a low-rent version of Coney Island. He has become infatuated with a sultry nightclub chanteuse and lavishes her with gifts and attention, spending money on her that might better go to maintaining his hold on his operation. His obsession with her, as well as his pride, clouds his judgment as Cornell, a much more ruthless hoodlum, moves in on Shubunka's territory, bribes and threatens his associates, and compromises his operation. As if in a Greek tragedy, the petty gangster's weaknesses conspire to cause his downfall.

This film is offbeat, with a psychological focus that's full of glorious theatrical melodrama it's certainly compelling. It's also certainly a film noir, with its seamy portrayal of doomed underworld characters and a fine supporting cast of noir stalwarts including Akim Tamiroff, Henry Morgan, Charles McGraw, and Elisha Cook, Jr. (Keep a lookout for Shelley Winters as a cashier.)

The actress known as Belita (birth name: Maria Belita Jepson-Turner) was a professional ice skater brought to Hollywood to try and replicate the success of another European skater, Sonja Henie. While Belita did make a few ice skating films such as Ice-Capades (1941) and Silver Skates (1943), she wound up perhaps better remembered by movie fans for her acting roles in her low-budget noirs (though in Suspense, she also skates!).

With the The effective musical score , heavy dramatic and sharp gritty script , first class cinematography that crates a dreamlike atmosphere; A downbeat ending for the books in this movie that is like a pulp novel come to life. It all jives and really works in the film's favor. Excellent offbeat film noir 8/10

A big fish in a small pond finds his little world crumbling around him when a bigger fish swims into town. Opening with a monologue so misanthropic it could have been penned by Travis Bickle, this is a brutal and cynical film. Allied Artists reunited the stars of Suspense, Barry Sullivan and Belita, and the results are an improvement. Sullivan is cold and paranoid as the titular character, completely without trust or sympathy in anyone around him. Belita doesn't get to do any ice-skating this time around, but she is very good as his long-suffering gal, her devotion and sincerity eventually beaten down by his suspicions. I said earlier that I was looking forward to more of Joan Lorring, and I was glad to see her here. She doesn't get a whole lot of screen time, but she has a wonderful part to play in the end. There's a couple of subplots to consider. John Ireland is a desperate gambler whose story hooks into Sullivan's at a crucial point. The part with Harry Morgan as a self-imagined Romeo is a bit more superfluous but provide some nice character moments. Also some fine supporting bits by noir regulars Elisha Cook, Charles McGraw and Sheldon Leonard (and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by Shelley Winters). The Louis Gruenberg score is occasionally overwhelming but mostly superb. And Paul Ivano's cinematography makes the most of the often cheap-looking sets, a lot of beautiful stylization, especially in the rain-soaked opening and closing sequences. Perhaps a little too self-conscious and stagy at times, but a very well-done, gloomy and sometimes poetic film.

I'm not convinced that we're seeing a straight-forward crime story with THE GANGSTER. It's practically an opium dream. He goes to the beach in a suit and tie and Elisha Cook comes along with a cohort and Cook keeps yapping about how he's going to knock Sullivan down - the 12-inch disparity in height makes this laughable.

Shubunka, Jammey, Karty - these names are so precious. Note the stylized sets - the hotel just off the boardwalk that seems about six-feet deep, it stops at the boardwalk. Yet when he runs into the lobby, it's as big as The Waldorf.

Shubunka, the gangster with no gang. He apparently gets his mob from Rent-A-Hood and when he tries to recruit, the potential members all laugh at him. He's big time, but has no money to afford out-of-town hoods. Sheldon Leonard anticipates his every move, yet he needs some silly list of Shubunka's operations. If Shubunka has all of those businesses under his control, why is he in the ice cream parlor all day?

Belita thinks she's a dancer, Ireland has a system to beat the races but he's in dutch with the mob - apparently Shubunka doesn't have the gambling concession on the boardwalk so Ireland goes to him for the money he owes since his fool-proof plan didn't work. Harry Morgan thinks he a stud and Fifi D'Orsay thinks she's a Goddess. The only one who knows his place is Tamiroff and he's smart enough to be scared but too dumb to have cut his ties with Shubunka sooner.

Lest you think I'm being negative, I'm not. It all seems as if Sullivan is hallucinating about his life and all of the characters are exaggerated, including himself. It's fascinating to watch.