Motion pictures, though often viewed as no more than fantasy and escapism, often reflect the society and time in which they are produced, and for all the melodrama and "fantasy" of the gangster film genre, this is one type of film that seems destined to be a reflection on the society which produces it. The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) and The Godfather (Francis Coppola, 1972) are separated by 40 years of time. The two films have much in common, but they also reflect different views of their respective social settings and specifically of the nature of the experience of organized crime in America.
Both films involve underlying assumptions about the force of the American Dream and the way in which that dream has been distorted as a justification for crime by certain individuals. Both films reflect the view that some criminals are born and some are made, thus taking the middle-ground in the debate over whether society or the criminal is at fault for crime. Both films also involved issues of family, the importance and meaning of family, and the relationship between family and crime. Both films are critical of American society while at the same time affirming certain American values, though perhaps in a distorted fashion. Both films reflect certain conventions of the gangster film genre, including the iconography of guns, meetings in warehouses, and the by-play and politics of the gang hierarchy.
The Public Enemy was presented as a social document when it was first issued and even more so when it was later reissued with a legend at the beginning of the film explaining the deeper social meaning of the story of Tom Powers. The story covers a period of over twenty years, beginning in 1909 when Tom and his friend are children and continuing to the present, to 1931. It is clear from the beginning, from the time that he was a child, that Tom and his brother are products of the slums of New York, but at the same time it seems...