The 30 Greatest Gangster Movies
Mobsters, molls, heavies & hoods. An offer you can't refuse...
BY Jun 16th 2009 13:13PMFILED UNDER: Features
User Comments (8)
15. Breathless (1960)
Jean-Luc Godard’s crime classic is the quintessential movie of the French New Wave.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, a whole new style of movie star with his boxer’s nose and thick lips, is Michel, a petty thief who kills a cop down south and heads for Paris to look up Patricia (Jean Seberg), an American student less naïve than she looks.
Michel’s US-gangster pose is lifted straight from Jean-Pierre Melville (who takes a cameo role) but the jump-cuts, hand-held camera, improv jazz score and quirky shifts of pace and mood are all Godard.
“Modern movies begin here,” said Roger Ebert.
Killer Scene: The long, unbroken tracking shot that follows Belmondo’s stricken Michel down a Parisian cobbled street.
14. Le Samourai (1961)
Melville’s gangsters stalk the Parisian backstreets in trenchcoats and trilbies, shoulders weighted with existential angst.
They’re chic though: even on the run, Alain Delon’s hitman looks like he’s just stepped out of a Paris Match photoshoot.
Terser than the director’s earlier hoodlum flicks, it regards criminal activity – like Delon stealing a Citroën in the virtuoso opening – with an obsessive eye for detail.
Tarantino’s a fan: “Melville’s movies were basically the Warner Brothers Bogart-Cagney films set to this French-Parisian rhythm.”
Killer Scene: Eluding gendarmes in a dash through the Paris Metro.
13. Salvatore Giuliano (1962)
French critic Michel Ciment reckoned this documentary-tinged portrait of the Sicilian bandit-cum-political terrorist established Francesco Rosi as “the greatest political filmmaker of his time”.
Dead as the film opens, his subject rarely even appears in the ensuing flashbacks. Rosi scrupulously assembles facts and reports pertaining to Giuliano’s death, but suggests the cover-up renders the truth unknowable.
Society, the Mafia and politicos share culpability in Rosi’s crime film-as-political exposé.
Killer Scene: An assiduous beginning: Giuliano’s corpse is described in an official report that reveals diddly-squat.
Next: Mean Streets, Point Blank, Pulp Fiction...
Print Comments (8)
1: ebrown2112 says
I disagree about the exclusion of The Departed, but I agree about Goodfellas at #1.
Posted: Jun 23rd 2009 // 2:04PMAlert a moderator
2: weirdr0b0t says
i had forgotten about the departed, and i agree that should have been in there!!
What about Road to Perdition as well!! That movie should definitely be in there!!
Posted: Jun 23rd 2009 // 6:53PMAlert a moderator
3: adammiller2k says
forget the departed, infernal affairs is so much better! and having both in the list would have been stupid. great list though. i know i might get hounded for this, but if you had room for only 1 new wave "gangster movie" i'd replace breathless with truffaut's "shoot the pianist" that's a stonking good movie.
do the vengance triology not count as gangster movies? i know they are revenge tragedies, but then so is get carter (what a movie).
ps tokyo drifter rocks!
Posted: Jun 24th 2009 // 1:43AMAlert a moderator
4: Desperation says
I think Carlito's Way should have been higher.
Posted: Jun 24th 2009 // 11:39AMAlert a moderator
5: weirdr0b0t says
and you figure s****h or lock Stock or even RocknRolla would have got a mention!!
Posted: Jun 24th 2009 // 6:38PMAlert a moderator
6: Film2517 says
a pretty accurate list but Gomorrah is the most notable exclusion on it.
Posted: Jun 25th 2009 // 3:26PMAlert a moderator
7: SUPERmovieFREAK says
Okay this isn't that bad a list. You've definitely got some all time classics in there like the Godfather Part 1 & 2, Mean Streets, Goodfellas etc, etc. I disagree with Goodfellas being number 1, The Godfather is the greatest movie and greatest gangster movie EVER made (but okay I can deal with Goodfellas being Number 1).
But there are some films in there I've never even heard of. What the hell is Casque D'or, never heard of it. Or The Killing, never heard of it. The Big Heat, never heard of it.
Instead the complete shmucks you are, you’ve gone and missed major classics out like The Untouchables. How could you forget that? It’s got a small but classic role by Robert DeNiro and the legendary Sean Connery.
Plus like people have said above you’ve also missed out major modern classics like The Departed, Gommorah, Road To Perdition and Rock ‘n’ Rolla.
AND WHAT THE HELL ABOUT Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence. Two great movies by a great director and I still can’t believe you missed them out.
If I was a Don and I saw that list I’d have you all whacked you shmucks.
Posted: Jun 25th 2009 // 5:25PMAlert a moderator
8: Hip2thabone says
Seriously this list is totally f****d up.
How can u have pulp fiction higher than donnie brasco or infernal affairs?
What about a movie called "SHOTTAS"?
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