Customer Reviews

Little Caesar

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First National Pictures presents "LITTLE CAESAR" (25 January 1931) (78 min/B&W) (Fully Restored/Dolby Digitally Remastered) -- Rico joins Sam Ventori's gang --- He replaces Sam as leader, pushes rival gang leader Arnie Lorch out of town, then goes after the job of next-higher-up Pete Montana --- He accepts when "Big Boy" offers him that prize but his sights are set higher still and also on his best friend Joe's girl Olga.

Edward G. Robinson makes it so entertaining! --- Robinson, like James Cagney, can dominate a film --- He certainly does that in this film -- Edward G. is in top form.

Under the production staff of:
Mervyn LeRoy [Director]
W.R. Burnett [Novel]
Robert N. Lee [Continuity]
Francis Edward Faragoh [Screen version & dialogue]
Hal B. Wallis [Producer]
Tony Gaudio [Cinematographer]
Ray Curtiss [Film Editor]

BIOS:
1. Mervyn LeRoy [Director]
Date of Birth: 15 October 1900 - San Francisco, California
Date of Death: 13 September 1987 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California

2. Edward G. Robinson [aka: Emmanuel Goldenberg]
Date of Birth: 12 December 1893 - Bucharest, Romania
Date of Death: 26 January 1973 - Hollywood, California

the cast includes:
Edward G. Robinson ... Little Caesar - Alias 'Rico'
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ... Joe Massara
Glenda Farrell ... Olga Stassoff
William Collier Jr. ... Tony Passa
Sidney Blackmer ... Big Boy
Ralph Ince ... Pete Montana
Thomas E. Jackson ... Sergeant Flaherty
Stanley Fields ... Sam Vettori
Maurice Black ... Little Arnie Lorch
George E. Stone ... Otero
Armand Kaliz ... De Voss
Nicholas Bela ... Ritz Colonna (as Nick Bela)

Mr. Jim's Ratings:
Quality of Picture & Sound: 4 Stars
Performance: 4 Stars
Story & Screenplay: 4 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars [Original Music, Cinematography & Film Editing]

Total Time: 78 min on DVD ~ First National Pictures ~ (01/25/2005)

"Little Caesar" (1931) is a slightly off kilter recanting of the Al Capone story, told under the auspices of not so pure fiction. Chicago nobody, Caesar Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) acquires a toe hold in Sam Vettori's (Stanley Fields) mob. In no time he's muscled Sam out of his digs and bumped up against rival thug, Little Arnie Lorch (Maurice Black). After some fast talking and slick shooting, Caesar emerges the kingpin of kingpins; a magnet for hard-hitting smart talking success or, if you prefer, the antithesis of the American dream. Shrewd and ever growing suspicious and paranoid, Caesar eventually finds both his niche and his downfall in Olga Strassoff (Glenda Farrell), a little bit of something who weaves her magic like a spider. Along with "The Public Enemy", this film established the Warner in-house style for social consciousness and nail-biting drama.

Director, Raoul Walsh seems to know his way around a gat in this yarn about gangsters and vixens, but in retrospect, this film lacks the immediate fireball response generated by "The Public Enemy."

Warner's DVD transfer falls short of expectations. Though the gray scale is often nicely balanced, the image quite often reflects a decidedly soft characteristic that is blurry on the eyes. Age related artifacts are persistent and sometimes distracting. At times the image quality is quite unstable, changing from generally smooth and nicely contrasted to wildly grainy image quality from shot to shot. Vertical lines and a tears crop up throughout the film and, while not present for very long, nevertheless distract. The audio is mono and generally pleasing, though background hiss is quite noticeable. Extras include a commentary by Richard Jewell that is just average, a newly produced featurette and Leonard Maltin doing his thing with "Warner's Night at the Movies." The 1954 re-release trailer is also included.

This is a fairly decent performance by Edward G. Robinson and the rest the cast but the story is not that compelling and the sets, music, and direction don't stand out. I recommend "Key Largo" over this one. Both Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart put in great performances. Not only that you have a better story, music, and direction. Besides you can get "Key Largo" on DVD for less than this movie.

Even fans of this movie should consider the fact it is expensive for VHS. I wouldn't buy "Little Caesar" on VHS anyway, I would wait for it on DVD if you like it.

all the critics always rave as this is the all time gangster film, i disagree. I think it is slow moving without much to hold interest. Personally i love the oldies, i like other work by Edward G Robinson as well as the Bogart and Cagney gangster films but little ceaser is not worth all the hype. Maybe it inspired other films but the other films are better. Instead of this film i recomend Brother Orchard with Robinson & Bogart, Angels with dirty faces with Cagney , and Bullets and Ballots with Bogie.

This film was a direct ideological intervention in the debate about prohibition, or exactly for the repealing of the famous amendment that had introduced prohibition. The argument was that prohibition gave gangsters a tremendous field of development and thriving. As such it was an important film. But nowadays it does not work at all on this level. The acting is cold and very stiff. The plot is reduced to a caricature of anything it deals with. It is definitely neither thrilling, not exciting, nor even entertaining. Too slow, too trite, too superficial. And, what's more, Little Caesar is no Al Capone. It is not with mediocre characters that we can make a great film. Note yet one important conclusion we can draw from the film: crime, for those mostly Italian poor immigrants, was a compensation for their poverty and alienation. The film tried to show that it was an illusion: one can start from the gutter and get to the top thanks to crime, but one will necessarily end up in the gutter again, and most of the time with a few slugs of lead in his flesh. The morality of the police guns that look after our welfare, even when the crime considered is created by an absurd constitutional and legislative decision.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

It is too easy to view LITTLE CAESAR and to laugh at the often caricatured voice of Edward G. Robinson as the small time hood who clawed a rapid rise to the top of Chicago's underworld only to tumble equally fast. What the modern viewer may fail to grasp is that when LITTLE CAESAR was released in 1930 Robinson was no star and the gangster movie did not exist as a genre. With his menacing voice and tough guy attitude, Robinson changed all that. It is because of him that later cinema gangsters like Pacino and Brando could strut their stuff.

At the beginning of the film, Robinson is Rico Bandello, the 'Little Caesar.' He drifts into Chicago and invites himself as a member of the ruling gang. Even then, with nothing but his gravitas and physical presence, he could take words that were meant to be conciliating and twist them into a snarl laden with menace. What I found interesting was that whenever Robinson went face to face with an adversary, Robinson forced him to look down at his own diminutive height as if to say, 'Your size means nothing, fool.' It becomes soon clear that the mob boss will surrender his place through default. Rico Bandello manages to cram into little more than an hour a case study in the ephemerality of the solitary gangster who relies more on his brutal personality than on some hired brains to run his criminal enterprise.

On a technical note, the sound track was at times incomprehensible, an excusable flaw since sound engineering had just begun the year before. Further, the dialogue sounds incredibly cliched, but again, to the audience of 1930, Rico's words were jarringly original. When a gasping, dying, Little Caesar spits out as a last snarl of defiance, 'Is this the end of Rico?', Edward G. could not have known that his ending of this gangster film was but the prologue of a series of crime movies that are as popular today as when Rico Bandello lay on a filthy street, shocking America with his surprisingly emotional epitaph.

The rise and fall of a vicious gangster. This is the landmark film that launched the gangster movie cycle, a powerful movie that chronicled for the first time in talkies the sleazy and slick underworld, epitomised by a snarling and ambitious creature with no redeeming virtues, Robinson, in the role which was forever identified with him. Eddie is a dedicated killer and thief as seen from the very beginning of the film: viewing him over 6O years later, the viewer can't help but to wonder at his incredibly perceptive performance. Rico has a pseudo homosexual relationship with Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) and the scene where Rico pays an old harridan (Lucille LaVerne) practically his entire fortune to hide him out in a secret back room of her store is memorable: boy, does she take advantage of the situation! The ending line was originally "Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?" In order to soften the tone for American Bible belt audiences, the line was changed to "Mother of mercy". The film was a huge smash in it's day and films such as THE PUBLIC ENEMY, SMART MONEY, THE FINGER POINTS & SCARFACE were soon to follow.