Search - Little Caesar on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Violence, Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1930 DVD Release: 01/25/2005 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 18 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 1 Genres: Crime, Crime Drama, Gangster Film

The first "talkie" gangster movie to capture the public's imagination, Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar started a cycle of crime-related movies that Warner Bros. rode across the ensuing decade and right into World War II with titles such as All Through the Night (1941). At the start of the picture, Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello (Edward G. Robinson, made up to look a lot like the real-life Al Capone) and his friend Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) are robbing a gas station -- later on, at a diner, they're looking over a newspaper and see a story about Diamond Pete Montana (Ralph Ince), a gangster so well known that he gets headlines and stories written about how powerful he is. That's what Rico wants, more than money or anything else: to be czar of the underworld and "not just another mug." Joe admits that sometimes he just thinks of trying to become what he wanted to be when he started out: a professional dancer. They head east to Chicago (which is never named, but with the talk of the north side and the territories, you know what city it is) and Rico talks his way into the local mob run by Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields). The leader has his doubts over how quick Rico is to go for his gun, but also thinks he might be useful if he is as fearless as he says and can be kept under control.

Soon Rico is Sam's top enforcer and bodyguard, but it isn't long before he starts acting like the boss, questioning other members' loyalty and bravery and pushing into Sam's role as leader. He also commands the loyalty of the gang through his resourcefulness at planning and pulling jobs that are tough and risky, and getting away with them; the only exception is Joe, their respectable "front man," who has found romance with an actress (Glenda Farrell) and a career, and wants out of helping the gang. Rico won't let him leave, and pushes him to help them on a brazen New Year's Eve robbery of a restaurant, during which the new crime commissioner is shot dead by Rico. Now the heat is on, but instead of keeping a low profile, Rico seizes control of the gang from Sam and secures his power by ruthlessly rubbing out the only member (William Collier) who seems likely to squeal, gunning the man down on the steps of a church. Before long, Rico is the first among equals among the local mob chieftains, sharing a dais at a dinner honoring him with his nominal boss and one-time idol Diamond Pete. He's also making enemies by the bushel -- Flaherty (Thomas E. Jackson), the cop heading the investigation into the murder of the commissioner, won't let up and makes it his personal business to nail Rico, and the rival chieftains don't like the publicity Rico's getting or the attention it brings to all of them. Rico survives attempts on his life and consolidates his hold on the streets, and is suddenly on the edge of achieving his goal -- the "Big Boy" (Sidney Blackmer), the wealthy social Brahmin who really controls crimes in the city, invites him to a meeting to tell him that Diamond Pete is finished. Rico is going to be in charge of the rackets across the entire city and making sure the local bosses stay in line. He is at the pinnacle of his career, and then Rico overreaches -- he can still be nailed for the murder of the commissioner, and is paranoid enough not to trust Joe, even though Joe helped saved Rico's life and insists that he'll never squeal; Rico also plans on supplanting the Big Boy. His rise to power unravels as fast as it happened, in an outburst of violence that drives him underground. But with an ego as big as his, Rico can't stay hidden for too long, and Flaherty is waiting for him.

The violence in Little Caesar may seem tame by today's standards -- although seeing a proper print of the movie, such as the 2005-issued DVD, does restore some of that impact -- but it was shocking at the time, and proved riveting and even seductive, especially because it was tied to a very charismatic performance by Robinson. Between his portrayal and the sounds of pistols and Thompson submachine guns, the movie was a sensory revelation and literalized the violence that had been suggested purely by visuals in such silent gangster classics as Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927), itself yet another telling of a version of Capone's story. The language was also something newly coarse and bracing in movies, at a point when talkies were only a couple of years old. There's also a slightly homoerotic undertone to aspects of the character relationships that managed to get past the censors: Rico doesn't drink and seems uninterested in women; his fixation on Joe Massara, and his seeming competition for Massara's loyalty with the latter's fiancée, are couched in what seem like almost romantic terms; and his feeling of betrayal when Massara says he wants to leave the mob to get married seem almost more appropriate to someone caught in a romantic triangle. This is all made especially vivid when Rico laments not having killed Massara, admitting that he's been undone over "liking a guy too much." It's all nearly as striking as some of the more pointed psychological elements in subsequent gangster movies, including Tony Camonte's incestuous fixation on his own sister in Scarface (1932) and, at the far end of the cycle, Cody Jarrett's mother-fixation in White Heat (1949). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Edward G. Robinson - Rico Bandello
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. - Joe Massara
Glenda Farrell - Olga Strassoff
Sidney Blackmer - Big Boy
Thomas E. Jackson - Sgt. Flaherty

Warner Home Video's DVD release of Little Caesar is a real treat, though not necessarily because of its most ambitious bonus feature. The greatest selling point here is the transfer, which seems to have come from a source very close to the camera negative -- certainly the full-screen image (1.33:1) is closer to the original negative than any previous edition of the movie seen on home video or television (the television edition of the film in the 1960s and 1970s seemed to be missing any real detail in the final scene). On this DVD, that's not a problem, and there is more visual detail throughout this presentation of the movie than one has seen in Little Caesar in many decades. There are some scratches and other signs of wear in the 75-year-old movie, but the picture is still very crisp, with Glenda Farrell's evening gown in her first scene and the accompanying shots of the art deco restaurant taking us into levels of elegance that lesser prints merely hint at. Now one can appreciate what Warner Bros. spent its money on. The movie is accompanied by a relevant (and unintentionally funny) newsreel clip from the same era with a gangster connection, and also a cartoon (Lady Play Your Mandolin) by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising that is uncomfortably close to the style of early Disney, plus the early Spencer Tracy short The Hard Guy, which is surprisingly topical and a fairly sophisticated sociological document of its time.

The major supplemental feature is the commentary track by Richard Jewell, which has some virtues but mostly just drones on. Jewell isn't telling us too much that we can't see for ourselves, and the there are too many places where he equivocates in his language; something "may have" represented this or "probably" had that effect on audiences of the period. Between his near-monotone delivery and less-than-emphatic phrasings, the commentary comes off as a not quite first-rate film lecture. The real gem among the bonus features is "Little Caesar: End of Rico, Beginning of the Antihero," an appended documentary featuring comments and observations, supported by film clips, from Gerald Peary, Martin Scorsese, Robert Sklar, Drew Casper, Alain Silver, and others, who provide a lively range of historical observations about the making of the movie and the reasons for its being the kind of film it is. It adds vastly to the value of the disc and makes it a real bargain, especially given the quality of the film-to-video transfer. The 78-minute movie has been given a very generous 22 chapters, and is accompanied by the original release trailer and the forward to a re-release of both it and The Public Enemy on the same bill. There are English, French, and Spanish subtitles accessible as well, all through a very easy-to-use menu that opens automatically on start-up. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide