1. BELLRINGER
Why do you think we watch so much violence? What do we get out of it?
Why do you think our media continues to produce content with so much violence in it?
Is there a line of too much fictional violence? If so, when/why is that line crossed?

2. The Gangster Film
The way of the gun

3. Genre Description
Gangster Films track the rise and fall of criminals or gangsters, particularly underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and violently murdering their way to the top.
personal power struggles or conflict with law and order figures, an underling or competitive colleague, or a rival gang.
Gangster/crime films are usually set in large, crowded cities, to provide a view of the secret world of the criminal: dark nightclubs, streets, high rises
Gangster films are morality tales: Horatio Alger or 'pursuit of the American Dream' success stories turned upside down in which criminals live in an inverted dream world of success and wealth.

4. The Gangster- A Profile
Film gangsters are usually materialistic, street- smart, immoral, and self-destructive. They rise to power showing an ambitious desire for success and recognition, but may, at some point, express sensitivity and gentleness.
Often from poor immigrant families, gangster characters often fall prey to crime in the pursuit of wealth, status, and material possessions because all other "normal" avenues to the top are unavailable to them. Although they are doomed to failure and inevitable death (usually violent), criminals are sometimes portrayed as the victims of circumstance, because the stories are told from their point of view.

5. Style, Theme and Iconography
Themes:
Power
Ambition
Fate
Retribution
Repression
Violence
Vengeance
Pride
Loyalty
Law
Rags-to-Riches

6. History – The Primitive Period
Criminal/gangster films date back to the early days of film during the silent era. One of the first to mark the start of the gangster/crime genre was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) about organized crime.
The events of the Prohibition Era, the existence of real- life gangsters and the rise of contemporary organized crime helped to encourage this genre.
These movies helped mobsters rise to folk hero status, and audiences during that time vicariously experienced the gangster's satisfaction with flaunting the system and feeling the thrill of violence. Movies flaunted exploits of swaggering, cruel, wily, tough, and law-defying bootleggers and urban gangsters.
The talkies era accounted for the rise of crime films, because these films couldn't come to life without sound. The first "100% all-talking" picture and, of course, the first sound gangster film was The Lights of New York (1928)

7. The Primitive Period SCARFACE
Howard Hawks' raw Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932), a Howard Hughes' produced film from UA starred Paul Muni as a power-mad, vicious, immature and beastly hood in Prohibition-Era Chicago (the characterization of Tony Camonte was loosely based on the brutal, murderous racketeer Al Capone). The ultra-violent, landmark film in the depiction of Italian-American immigrant gangsters included twenty-eight deaths, and the first use of a machine gun by a gangster.

8. The Classical Period
The Classical period of the early 30s made famous a number of the biggest studio actors of the time, fictionalized some of the most notorious gangsters of the period, and created the fist anti-heroes of American film.
Most of the typical features of the Gangster genre were established during this time.
Warner Bros. was considered the gangster studio. actors who established and defined their careers in this genre, included:
Edward G. Robinson “Little Ceasar” (1930)
James Cagney “Angels with dirty Faces” (1938)
Humphrey Bogart “Roaring 20s” (1939) “Petrified Forest” (1936)

9. The Revisionist Period
The Gangster Genre, falls out of fashion in the early 40s (or is overtaken in the crime genre by the film noir) and stays irrelevant until Coppola, Scorsese and others revitalize the genre in the 70s.
The Revisionist period (extending arguably to today)keept much of the iconography, tropes, and archetypes while playing with the motivations, race, location, period and outcome of the gangster.
No longer the morality tale where the “bad guy” must get his Kumuppins (perhaps crime DOES pay) the film may not blame the criminals, may blame the society in which they exist. Often in the revisionist gangster film, the Law is just as corrupt and unscrupulous as the criminals.
The body count and the graphic nature of the violence see a marked increase.

10. Parodic Period
At various times, in response to various incarnations of popular gangster films, parodies inevitably pop up to poke fun at overly serious and pretentious films of the genre.
Use a lot of the same iconography, characters and themes but with some twist or obvious irony/sarcasm.

11. Extensionist PeRiod
The Extension Period has taken various elements of the genre and combined them with other genres or other unexpected elements.
Envisions similar stories of ambition, corruption, or crime figures, but puts them in different contexts, time periods or cloaked in different genre settings.

12. Implications of the Gangster Genre
Film Noir
Spawned multiple branches of the crime sub-genres
Set the tone/precedent for violence in American film
The rise in popularity of the anti-hero
Questions the validity or achievability of the American Dream
Paved the way and provided the fertile thematic ground for many of our best and most relevant TV shows.