Underworld (1927)

hyped garbage

disgusting, overrated, pointless

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

UNDERWORLD (1927) tells the story of love, betrayal and murder among gangsters in 1920's Chicago. Rolls Royce (Clive Brook), an alcoholic former lawyer, gets back on his feet when gangster Bull Weed (George Bancroft) takes him in off of the street. Complications arise when Weed's girlfriend Feathers (Evelyn Brent) and Royce start to become attracted to each other, and when a rival gangster, Buck Mulligan (Fred Kohler) becomes increasingly antagonistic towards Weed. Directed by Josef von Sternberg.UNDERWORLD was von Sternberg's debut feature, and it's quite impressive. This is basically the granddaddy of gangster movies, and you can see its influence in later classics such as LITTLE CAESAR and SCARFACE (the original 1932 version). Ben Hecht was the main screenwriter, so the movie emerges as a starkly realistic portrait of organized crime during the Prohibition. The film moves fast and doesn't waste time, clocking in at an hour and 20 minutes. It keeps you in suspense until the end. The film also boasts fine performances. Clive Brook was very effective as Rolls Royce, a stoic, down-and-out former lawyer who strives to maintain what little dignity he has left and tries to fight his attraction to Feathers. He is quite expressive and believable. George Bancroft is also fine as Weed, alternating convincingly between boisterous charm and raw aggression. Evelyn Brent is adequate in her role as Feathers, though I felt she could have been a bit more expressive at times, but she does have good chemistry with Clive Brook. Fred Kohler is appropriately menacing and brutish as Mulligan, and Larry Semon offers a bit of comic relief as well. The cinematography of UNDERWORLD shows considerable skill and accomplishment. Editing is smooth and fluid, and there are a variety of tracking shots, especially during a car chase sequence, as well as interesting camera angles and lighting. It's an impressive debut and one of the foundations of an entire genre. SCORE: 9/10

Of the three silent classics made by Josef von Sternberg in the 1920s, "The Last Command" and "The Docks of New York" were declared part of the US National Film Registry, but according to my personal taste and appreciation of film art, the obvious choice for this distinction should have been "Underworld". Sternberg would later meet Marlene Dietrich for the classic early sound film "The Blue Angel" and become the creator of the "Marlene myth"; but in "Underworld" there are already hints of mastery of composition and framing, without the tendency to exotica through the eyes of Hollywood displayed in the Dietrich films ("Morocco", "Blonde Venus", "Shanghai Express", for example), although a couple of them are good. "Underworld" is the fascinating story of the rise, decadence and fall of a criminal (George Bancroft) in luscious black & white: for those who have seen Howard Hawks' "Scarface" (1932), the plot may seem familiar, because both films are based on a story by Ben Hecht, who won one of the first Oscars when there was an Academy Award for "Best Story", for his tale of "Underworld". Closer to Expressionism than Hawks' film, and away from the strident first experimentations with sound, "Underworld" is an elegant motion picture, with seductive silhouettes and aural suggestions, to evoke the climate of violence that determines the story. A must-see film.

I am not a big fan of silent films. I generally will only watch them to see a certain star ("Wings" & "It" for Clara Bow & Gary Cooper comes to mind). My personal favorite genre are gangster films. It does not matter if you are talking about Cagney, Robinson & Bogart, right up through "American Gangster", there are less than a handful I did not like. Let me say, this movie is exceptional. It really has a lot of action (Spoilers: Particularly the final scenes with the machine guns), and it has characters that are sympathetic (Particularly Rolls-Royce and Feathers). But what really works best is Bancroft's playing of Bull Weed. Weed is extremely complex. Weed is a bad guy, but not evil like "Machine Gun" Butch Schmidt (Wallace Beery in "The Big House), Cody Jarrett, Rico Bandetto, Tony Camonte (Paul Muni's "Scarface") or Tony Montana. He has compassion for those less fortunate (Rolls-Royce, the kitten, particularly the guard he refused to kill, when he escaped (A real evil person would kill that guard)). An awesome film, well worth watching for gangster film fans.

Underworld (1927) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Big-time gangster Bull Weed (George Bancroft) takes pity on an alcoholic lawyer (Clive Brooke) and gets him cleaned up and back into shape. Soon the lawyer and the gangster's moll (Evelyn Brent) begin to fall in love but they both owe Bull everything they own so this puts a hamper on their relationship. D.W. Griffith is credited with making the first gangster film and 1915's REGENERATION gets credit for being the first feature-length film to feature gangsters but I think it's fair to say that UNDERWORLD is what really shaped the genre for decades to come. When you watch this film you can see the impact it would have on Warner and their upcoming gangster pictures with Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. You can also see the impact it would have on films like SCARFACE. The Oscar-winning screenplay from Ben Hecht really puts us into the life of gangsters and their lifestyles better than any movie up to this point so I'm sure that's the reason this thing went over so well with people back when it was released. The most impressive thing for me was the beautiful look of the film and it's clear von Sternberg wanted to show the fast, loose and dangerous world that these men lived in. I really loved how the director would shoot the more outrageous stuff extremely fast and almost out of control as this really did make you feel as if you're were involved with these men and you could feel the pace that their lives worked. One of the best scenes happen early on when the lawyer, still working like a bum, gets picked on by another gangster to get some money out of a dog bowl. Just take a look at this sequence and see how von Sternberg slows things down just to add some built up tension that something bad could happen at any second. This type of suspense is used in the same fashion later in the film when the moll comes under attack by this same gangster. Bancroft is downright marvelous in the role of Bull and you can easily see the influence he's have on everyone who would play a gangster. I loved the toughness he brought to the role and in the scenes where he goes off you can't help but understand and feel why everyone would be frightened of him. Bancroft has the perfect look for the role and you can't help but feel he was born to play the part. Brooke is also very good in his more serious and straight role. Brent is wonderful as well and we also get strong support from Fred Kohler as the rival gangster and Larry Semon gets a few funny scenes of comic relief. I did have a few problems with the film and that includes the ending, which I found to be quite bad and it really took away from how the characters were throughout the film. I won't ruin everything but I didn't believe what happened and thought the film should have ended in a different way. I also thought the love story could have used a couple more scenes just to build it up as the relationship between the lawyer and moll seemed to happen a bit too fast. With that said, this is a very important film and it's easy to see why it was such a hit in its day and why it would influence so many.