1947 Directed by Gordon Wiles
Based on the novel Low Company. One of the most peculiar film noirs of the 1940s stars Barry Sullivan as a small-time hood who suffers a mental breakdown as his big plans begin to crumble. Beautiful Belita is the slumming society girlfriend who only fuels his paranoia.
Barry Sullivan Belita Joan Lorring Akim Tamiroff Harry Morgan John Ireland Sheldon Leonard Fifi D'Orsay Virginia Christine Elisha Cook Jr. Ted Hecht Leif Erickson Charles McGraw John Kellogg Edwin Maxwell Dewey Robinson Murray Alper Shelley Winters Larry Steers Marie Blake Griff Barnett Sid Melton Jeff Corey Peter Whitney
USANR
USA
Whereas in most gangster films we see the rise and fall of the title character, here we see only the fall, starting about halfway down. We never see Shubunka (Barry Sullivan) having any degree of success — instead, all we hear are memories and voices people who despise, disdain, or dismiss him for who he was and what he did. It’s a sad story, and it’s extraordinarily told: we watch Shubunka (Yes, it does sound like people are saying “Chewbacca” when they talk about him. It takes some getting used to.) collapse from the inside out, as his own doubt and insecurities eat away at the man he still tries to be. When he manages to find the public figure…
If noir leads weren't killed in the final act they'd go on to be the lead in this movie. Sharply written by Dan Fuchs (Criss Cross!) this is a darkly depressing movie about a washed up gangster who makes bad decisions and the people around him somehow make even worse ones.
Something like Inside Llewyn Davis, but with more ice cream and guns.
Titular criminal Barry Sullivan runs a numbers racket out of a soda shop while trying to fend off a takeover attempt by rival mobsters, some desperate maneuvering by a friend who robbed the wrong folks, and his own descent into paranoia and mental illness.
This one's far from your typical noir story, with as much focus on Sullivan's stresses and mental deterioration as his criminal activities. As such it's a much more thoughtful, melancholy, even sorta trippy kind of gangster movie. Sullivan is a sturdy lead, able to pull off both the confident shot-calling and the crippling self-loathing his tricky role calls for. Belita is quite magnetic as Sullivan's love interest and object of obsessions. John Ireland nearly steals the…
Very good looking noir, with a simple enough story, but I will say probably one too many characters for you to fully immerse yourself in the story.
Barry Sullivan is great, but there's not enough of John Ireland, who always steals every scene he's in when he appears in a film.
Low budget noir come character study of the criminal and law abiding residents of coney island/neptune beach. Barry Sullivan's central character has his empire collapsing and is spending too much time on a woman and ignoring the problems in front of him. As such it has more in common plotwise with 70s and 80s gangster films like The Long Good Friday or even the Godfather movies than it does a 30s gangster movie or the Noirs it gets listed alongside.
Which isn't to say it's in that kind of class of course, but it does have a totally different take on it's subject matter than you would expect from the period and also goes out of it's way to develop it's supporting cast of small time crooks and associates.
An interesting little curio
This was an ambitious effort and while it didn't fully succeed I appreciate it.
The film involves a cast of characters, most of them struggling. The main interior set is a soda fountain where these characters either work or frequent. There's Akim Tamiroff, the worried owner and Harry Morgan, the bullshit talking soda jerk, and Joan Lorring, the young no-nonsense cashier. (And Shelley Winters in a one-minute scene as another cashier.) There's John Ireland, an accountant addicted to gambling and begging for money, and his wife, played by Virginia Christine, who comes in a couple times trying to save him. They all know, fear or hate the title character, Shubunka, played by Barry Sullivan, who runs rackets and involves Tamiroff…
Everyone's going around acting like this guy is the hunchback of Notre Dame and he's just got one small scar on his face.
Solid street-level noir about a down-and-out gangster clinging on to his last vestige of power. By necessity the film restricts itself to just a handful of locations but the various characters responding to the weakened protagonist with either empathy or malice keeps things interesting. John Ireland is great in a counfoundingly small role. And there's a good hard-nosed ending to boot!
Rather dour noir picture as a minor kingpin watches his little empire fall away with something between cockiness and apathy. I like the lead performances from Sullivan and Belita, and it's fun seeing a young Harry Morgan in his supporting role (even as his character's storyline feels a bit like a detour). There's a very crafted vibe to this, with the director Wiles being a famed production designer prior to this. There's no hiding that it is rather stagy and play-like, but Wiles still makes use of a cinematic bag of tricks in his attention to faces in close up, something that adds to the lead (and, therefore, the film's) intense sense of ennui and misanthropy. It drags and scatters…
Tries to put a melodramatic touch to the life of a gangster, but goes a little overboard with the emotions. Would have felt better had the sappy nature been more focused. Doesn't mean the character development wasn't a intriguing part of The Gangster (1947), for there are layers here. It just wasn't working optimally for my tastes.
Bleak, pessimistic, dark, and even heartbreaking... and thoroughly engaging at every step of the way, and absolutely worth seeing. What distinguishes it from other movies in the genre is the cast of characters surrounding the eponymous gangster, all periodically convening in and departing from an ice cream shop on the Neptune boardwalk in NYC, just east of the better-known Coney Island. The entire cast is superb, and you'll see many familiar faces, including a very young Shelley Winters near the end, nearly unrecognizable. The many interlocking parts and character arcs tell stories of defeat, longing, revenge, desperation, jealousy, and cutthroat competition. I wonder if Coppola was inspired by this movie to include the screeching elevated train sounds in The Godfather restaurant hit scene. Lovely noirish lighting and camerawork -- keep a lookout for a recurring chessboard motif on ceilings and floors.
It was hard to like this movie because it was hard to like the characters. Harry Morgan made it a little light as Shorty and Shelly Winters as the new girl was interesting but she was only on for a few seconds. Everyone else was either mad or sad or mad about being sad.
Barry Sullivan plays gangster Shubunka. The movie is about his downfall and it takes a while to figure that out. Shubunka almost smiles once in the movie but the rest of the time he looks like he has a toothache. The love angle doesn't work for me because I can't see anyone would want to be with him.
Watching the decline of a gangster is not entertaining to me even if he is a bad guy. I was actually glad the movie ended.
