A Companion to the Gangster Film

GEORGE S. LARKE-WALSH is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Arts at the University of North Texas. Her current scholarly projects are focused on documentary history and theory as well as the gangster genre in international cinema. She has published articles on authorship and performativity in documentary as well as various contributions and a book on the representation of the Mafia in Hollywood cinema.

Notes on Contributors viii

Acknowledgments xvi

Introduction 1
George S. Larke‐Walsh

Part I The Americas 21

1 Mary Pickford Meets the Mafia 23
Amy E. Borden

2 Tough Talk: Early Sound and the Development of American Gangster Film Vernacular, 1928–1930 41
Ron Wilson

3 How Good Boys Go Bad: The Changing Face of the Gangster Film in America 58
John E. Petty

4 Making of a Mobster: From Myth to the Crystallization of the Mafia Archetype in 1950s and 1960s Italian and Italian American Film 76
Ryan Calabretta‐Sajder

5 Moral Ambiguities: The Frenchness of New Hollywood Gangster Families 97
Isolde Vanhee

6 The Assassin’s Economics of Killing: Money, Honor, and the Market of Murder 113
Fran Mason

7 The 1990s Hollywood Gangster: Generic Reflections and Deflections 129
Karine Hildenbrand

8 “Based On A True Story”: Public Enemies and the Biographical Gangster Film 146
Stephen Gaunson

9 The Gangster in Hispanic American Cinema 166
Philip Swanson

10 The Jamaican Gangster Film: Badman, Rude Bwoys, and Dons 182
Imruh Bakari

Part II Europe 209

11 When Criticism Meets Gangster Films: The Spiv Cycle as Oppositional Aesthetics in Postwar Britain 211
Ana Rodríguez Granell

12 The Patriarchal Figure in the 1950s French Gangster Film: Legendary Men from a Recent Past 228
Thomas Pillard and Translated by Myriam Chihab

13 Mafia, Mobility, and Capitalism in Italy Circa 1960 244
Luca Peretti

14 Gangsters in Turkish Cinema 262
Hülya Önal

15 Sun‐Drenched Corruption: Organized Crime, Global Capitalism, and the Mediterranean Coast in Recent Spanish Cinema 283
Vicente Rodríguez Ortega

16 The Russia They Have Lost: The Russian Gangster as Nostalgic Hero 302
Lioudmila Fedorova

17 A Hint of Lavender: The Gay Gangster in British Crime Cinema 319
Paul Elliott

18 The Modern British Gangster Film 334
Tom Ryall

Part III Asia 353

19 Death and Duty: The On‐Screen Yakuza 355
Elayne Chaplin

20 Yakuza no Onnatachi: Women in Japanese Gangster Cinema 377
Laura Treglia

21 Futile Liberation: Post‐Martial‐Law Taiwanese Gangster Films 395
Dominique Liao

22 Ruling the Men’s Den: Crime, Outrage, and Indian Women Gang Leaders 413
Sony Jalarajan Raj, Rohini Sreekumar, and Nithin Kalorth

23 Tsui Hark’s Film Workshop: Political Cues in the Gangster Film 1986–1989 430
James Fenwick

24 The Godfather Legacy: Homage and Allusion in Transnational Cinema 446
George S. Larke‐Walsh

25 Gangsta Gangsta: Hong Kong Triad Films, 1986–2015 463
Valerie Soe

26 Politics, Social Order, and Hierarchies in Post‐Millennium Hong Kong Cinema 480
Kelvin Ke Jinde

27 Jung Doo‐hong and the Gangster Body: Kkangpae in Contemporary South Korean Cinema 497
Se Young Kim

Index 518