Classic Movie Review: Little Caesar
By Josh Spiegel
November 27, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The film presented, for most of the country, a brand new movie star: the mobster. In some ways, Little Caesar is a classic in the same way that Citizen Kane is; you may not love the latter film (I do, but there are plenty of folks who aren't too hot on the movie, rightly claiming to have had the experience killed by a glut of hype), but its status as the best film ever is mostly due to the fact that, without it, there wouldn't be any kind of innovation in movies ever. Little Caesar is first and foremost classic because it's pretty much the first gangster talkie; at the very least, it was the first prominent film of its kind. The films that came afterward, such as Scarface or Angels with Dirty Faces, are an acknowledgment of this film's success.
The plot is simple enough: Rico starts out as a two-bit criminal, holding up small-town gas stations with the help of his best friend, Joe Massara, who'd rather be dancing (though there's a bit of homosexual subtext between these two, that's no euphemism). Rico is focused on being the kingpin to end all kingpins, though, and decides after the gas-station holdup that begins Little Caesar that he's going to the big, unnamed city. Once he's there, Rico weasels his way into being the bodyguard of Sam Vettori, the city's biggest and most powerful mobster. Eventually, Rico manipulates his way into being the top dog, which means that he can only end up as Vettori does, being humiliated and finding himself on the way down to pathetic infamy.
As Rico, Edward G. Robinson takes control of the movie from the very beginning. With his twisted face (making him look like a somewhat thinner, older, and slightly smaller version of John Belushi, actually), his slicked-back hair, and his beady eyes, Robinson was not anywhere close to the typical movie star. Even back in the 1930s, though, the studios knew that people couldn't, or wouldn't be entranced completely by the story of a man who was so superficially unattractive. Thus, we're given the stock love story as the subplot; Massara, portrayed by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., almost immediately decides to pursue his dancing career at a nightclub that just so happens to be controlled by Vettori. Massara has found his lady love in Olga (Glenda Farrell), who wants him to go straight, even though Rico wants him to do the opposite.
You're reading that description and remembering the many hundreds of movies and TV shows that have shown such storylines. Massara and his storyline seem a bit hackneyed; yes, seeing as the movie was released nearly 80 years ago, we should forgive this movie its potentially unoriginal and frustratingly stale contrivances. However, it's a bit hard to shake off the feeling that, even before Little Caesar, the women in mobster movies functioned solely to berate their husbands or sons into getting out of the game. Thus, with the exception of a climactic scene between Massara and Rico, Fairbanks' scenes are mostly flat and played blandly. It doesn't help that Fairbanks' acting style comes off as very dated; Robinson is unexpected and unpredictable, to the point that, by the time he's begun speaking as we imagine he does (think Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons and you're halfway there), it doesn't rankle.
Robinson is equaled in sheer intrigue in a performance by Thomas Jackson, who portrays Detective Flaherty, the cop determined to catch Rico before his crime spree kills more people. Flaherty is, at all times, a cool and collected character; Francis Edward Faragoh, the film's screenwriter, has given this cop the darkest, funniest, and driest dialogue. Jackson, evoking memories of Ben Linus on Lost, lets loose with his one-liners with so much ease, it seems less like a performance than a documentary when he's onscreen. When the other mobster characters fill the screen, though, the script is almost too heavyhanded in the slang of the day. I won't be able to recreate it fully; in some ways, the dialogue would fall even flatter if it weren't these actors delivering the lines. Still, it's a unique thing to behold, a movie with slang that requires a pocket dictionary.
But, at the end of the day, the movie lives and dies with Robinson. Rico is a foolish, naïve, arrogant, and conceited individual. Neither Robinson nor the film's director, Mervyn LeRoy are interested in completely glorifying Rico. This, of course, is a problem of its own, as it's hard to shake the feeling that Rico and friends are a lot more fun when they're committing crimes than when the wet-blanket cops are coming to take them to the hangman's noose. That said, the point of the final sequence, as we see Rico living day by day, sleeping in a flophouse, and his old friend Massara succeeding at an honest living, is not hammered home as hard as the morals of some movies made during the Hayes Code, the restrictive system that would take hold of Hollywood from 1933 to the mid-1960s.
Is Rico ever an individual worth aspiring to? Obviously, gangsterism is something that's made light of in many films throughout the last 100 years. However, this guy isn't exactly someone who could fool you for more than a minute; even before he's the boss, his fellow mobsters see Rico as a lout whose itchy trigger finger is going to get more of the bad guys in trouble. Would you want to be a guy who doesn't seem to have any wants or ambitions aside from brute power and force? Rico is an odd character, in that he's almost never happy, never contented with what he's getting; when he gets control of half of the city, he's only focused on bringing his friend in the fold through intimidation. What would calm this guy? What would make him stop moving, if only for a second?
Little Caesar is a fascinating portrait of what it's like to be a gangster, especially at the cusp of the Great Depression, as viewed in the flophouse scene. This was the future for guys like Rico, something scarier than cops gunning him down. Rico thinks himself smart, which gets him in trouble. He comes from a small town, where he could outsmart everyone, but once he gets to a city with people whose minds are shrewder than his, little Caesar finds himself out of his game. The ending is no surprise, even before the Hayes Code; Rico gets shot and utters that famous line: "Mother of mercy...is this the end of Rico?" Kudos to Robinson for emphasizing the shock that breaks through Rico's constant defiance. His performance is the praiseworthy aspect that shines through to this day, even if the rest of the film's tropes would live on for years.