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Best movie ever!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

History has it that "The Public Enemy" is what made Cagney a star, and I can see why. He's got charisma, a real mean streak, and he's easy to envision as an iconic gangster. This is your straightforward rise-and-fall movie, a street rat's quest for the American dream (he's not all that far from Tony Montana); and it still has some heft, even if we've seen this story time and again.There's a saddening twist that comes in the final moments. And you can see it coming, but the execution - just one particular shot - has a startling impact.There are pacing issues, but those final scenes are entirely worth it. And I love that the movie is bookended by anti-crime PSAs. 7/10

THE PUBLIC ENEMY is a gem of crime fiction genre. After watching the film, this is my sentence came to my mind and I completely trust her. The powerful dramatization, social criticism and acting are more than convincing. Do not go into a -Aligning with the actual events at the time of Prohibition. I have the historical knowledge to conclude in this movie has the truth.The Public Enemy is the cornerstone of gangster drama. The actual shift in noir style. Most importantly, what is the film The Public Enemy will not drop any possibility that the world of gangs and crime so fundamentally contradictory world of government and legal currents. This movie will set things up so that shows two broken things: actually just broken things - such as the Criminal mile and as it is corrupt country in economic crisis and the legal patriotic values that include civil obligations and duties. Behind the condemnation of crime and hellish road that is growing up and raising one gangster stands out as a proposal for the viewer to live up to that image and to weigh it as the nature of which is not to be necessarily damned and negative to the world the law and the authorities, but that account with what there is in fact wrong and what is right.In essence, the point of the film is about how American society has to wake up and deal with the criminals, because the human relations by the day drifting towards the underworld.James Cagney as Tom Powers was after this film became a tough guy. A young, short, rude and able to breathe face that looks scary furiously. Some actors are just perfect for a certain type of role. Its performance is perhaps remarkable, controversial, convincing or exaggerated. The film was to such an act. It is important.Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook, Leslie Felton and Mae West They are good or just solid. The longer I stayed at Jean Harlow. She was the first bombshell in Hollywood. I make a distinction between sex symbol and sex bomb. This film need such an actress. I did not expect a good chemistry between Cagney and Harlow, but so bad a „cameo" in the film is rarely seen. In the description of the main female role. I think the female characters in this film quite degraded. Harlow had learned a lesson.The Public Enemy is a very good gangster movie. Technical, stylistic and interpretive very serious piece of work. Domination by James Cagney, who with his brisk acting set the standard.

When it was new, back in 1931 it was another time, with lots of issues, depression, prohibition and crime. Cagney was a small time NY actor looking for a break, and the director Wellman wanted a break-out performance. Actor Pat O'Brien used to describe his friend Cagney as "just a dancer gone wrong." But Cagney knew tough, in his autobiography he described growing up in the NY streets where the kids tossed bricks at each other, and sometimes the cops when they got bored. But where did this movie story come from? It turns out, two former hoodlums met when they went into the drugstore business in Chicago during prohibition and they heard a lot of bragging from their gangster clientèle and witnessed enough they decided to write a book about it and they called it BEER AND BLOOD. The cinema going public would have recognized several stories from the headlines that made it into this script, one was of a gas truck being used to smuggle beer another was the tale of a horse that caused the accidental death of a real-life hood named "Nails" Morton, finally a third event involving gangster Earl "Hymie" Weiss and an omelet. The phrase Public Enemy which is what Warner Bros. changed the title to, goes all the way back to Roman times but was popularized in Chicago by Frank Loesch, then chairman of the Chicago Crime Commission a prosecutor who stated he had a list of the outstanding hoodlums, known murderers but lacked the evidence to prove it. The FBI liked using this list so much they stole the idea and created their famous ten most wanted including at the time: John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde and "Scarface" Al Capone. The producer of the film decided to switch directors when William "WILD BILL" Wellman said, "Let me make it and I'll make the toughest dam gangster movie of them all." Then just before filming started they switched roles for the lead actors. Cagney had been cast as the supporting role until the writers and director saw a clip of THE MILLIONAIRE, an earlier film where Cagney's direct energy and fast delivery stole the movie and he was only in one scene and that was playing an insurance salesman! Everyone realized with the proper handling this skyrocket could create a firestorm of excitement and he does. Just watch Cagney's darting eyes, his body language and winks and that famous little jab or pulled punch of his. Cagney got that famous movie mannerism from his father who died from alcoholism at the age of 42, and Jimmy was just 19 causing him to drop out of school to support his family and put his brother thru medical school. Oddly, that is the exact opposite of what his character does in tonight's film. When the movie making was over, Cagney humbly said in an interview, "Movie stars, they come and they go with an exception now and then. Two more years and I'll be looking for a job on the stage again – maybe hoofing. What's the use of kidding myself." So he quit Hollywood and took his family back to New York. But Jack Warner saw the box office lines around the blocks of the theaters playing PUBLIC ENEMY and knew they struck gold, quickly he tripled Cagney's pay and begged him to come back. The rest as they say is history. Along with Warner Brothers' earlier hit Little Caesar made the year before and Scarface made just a year after, this movie set the tone for the popular gangster dramas of the Depression period, gritty and brutally realistic, and Cagney's performance established him as the essence of the ruthless, hair-trigger hoodlum – scary but fascinating. And he made it look fun because he was having a blast doing it. So much so, that the censor board made the studio add warnings and disclaimers at the beginning and end of the film. Also in the end credits you'll see Edward Woods billed over Cagney because that's the way they were originally hired.A hard-luck moll played by Mae Clarke may have been uncredited in this film, but her performance boosted her career so much that later that same year she became more famous for the attention of another monster, FRANKENSTEIN.For added realism director Wellman asked actor Donald Cook to really hit Cagney during a fight scene, which he did, knocking out two teeth, but Jimmy stayed in character.The New York Times upon its April 1931 release, called it "just another gangster film, weaker than most in its story, stronger than most in its acting; Woods and Cagney give "remarkably lifelike portraits of young hoodlums" and "Beryl Mercer as Tom's mother, Robert Emmett O'Connor as a gang chief, and Donald Cook as Tom's brother, do splendidly.Three particular scenes were cut when it was re-released after the Production Code was put into effect. 1) The scene with the gay tailor was, pardon the expression trimmed. 2) The scene of a couple waking up in bed together and rolling around having fun was shortened. 3) Showing Cagney being seduced when hiding out in a woman's apartment.And finally on a recent viewing I noticed a sound effect during a spanking scene that sounds so real I don't think it was faked, but still it got past the stinkers at the production code. This film was added to the National Film Registry in 1998.

Jean Harlow ruined her health (and died young) because of her bleached out platinum blonde hair, and looks a bit chunky (the 1920's term was "scatback") but is the perfect foil for tough little James Cagney (was he short!) in the movie that "put him on the map." From a script entitled "Beer and Blood," his character starts out innocently enough stealing $1 pocket watches from "Woolworth's." Soon he is a whiskey runner and beer "distributor" as prohibition begins. Whiskey transported in a gasoline tanker? He is fast and loose with his women, and shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clark's face. He's hellfire with a gun. He shots a cop. He kills his old boss "Putty Nose" and a race horse. He steals two blue steel .38 revolvers from the gun store owner! His "goody-two shoes" brother Mike goes to war and comes back a hero. He finally gets what he deserves and is shot down in a hail of bullets, with a machine gun. Most violence is only "heard" off-screen,but it's still pretty effective. His mama continues to believe that he is a good boy. He is left on his doorstep, looking like a mummy wrapped in hospital bandages and plaster casts. He falls forward (quite dead) in a shocking finale. TCM does a great job of restoration. When I saw this many years ago on TV, it was nothing but a pile of splices and scratches with a terrible soundtrack. A must-see, but (for me) not enjoyable enough for repeated viewing. Curiously, Jean Harlow is shown in the lobby poster with fire-red hair!