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Underworld opens with a series of title cards setting its mood, telling of "a
great city in the dead of night...streets lonely...moon clouded...buildings as empty as the cave dwellings of a forgotten age."
Suddenly an explosion shatters the façade of a bank building, and the
title cards announce that crime kingpin Bull Weed (George Bancroft)
has "closed another account."
Bull emerges from the wreckage carrying
his swag, but while making his getaway, he spots a derelict (Clive Brook)
wandering past, a potential witness, despite his apparent inebriated
state. Instead of killing him, Weed knocks him cold, throws him in his
car, and takes off, intending to figure out later what to do with his
unexpected "guest." Weed turns out to be a man of many parts -- greedy
and a brute when it comes to getting or keeping what he wants, but with
a soft spot for the underdog, and also smart enough to recognize the
importance of some knowledge that he doesn't possess.
He takes a liking
to the erudite but totally dissolute man, christening him "Rolls Royce"
and keeping him around as an elegant stooge, advisor, and sometime
driver. The man is only too happy to be taken off the streets and set
up in an apartment with a full library of books at his disposal, and
the two men's relationship is harmonious and mutually beneficial -- the
former derelict has a home, and the crime boss gets smart advice.
Bull
Weed and Rolls Royce's meeting is our introduction to the world of
Weed, in which he runs much of what he surveys, but not without
challengers. His most notable rival is vicious hood "Buck" Mulligan (Fred Kohler), who doesn't like Weed and also covets his girlfriend, "Feathers" McCoy (Evelyn Brent).
Rolls Royce is also drawn to Feathers, who is, in turn, attracted to
the gentle, witty man; however, out of decency to Bull, who has been a
benefactor in his own way to both of them, they agree to stay away from
each other.
This drives Rolls Royce back to the bottle part of the
time. Weed and Mulligan finally have it out during the underworld's
annual drunken bacchanal, a wildly expressionistic sequence that must
have seemed all the more dazzling and compelling to audiences in 1927,
in the middle of the Prohibition Era. Mulligan tries to take advantage
of his rival's passing out in a stupor by having his way with Feathers,
but Bull awakens with help from Mulligan's jealous girlfriend and Rolls
Royce, and proceeds to rescue Feathers and finish Mulligan -- an act
that gets him charged with murder, convicted, and sentenced to die.
Feathers and Rolls Royce, with the help of Bull's gang, try to help him
break out on the eve of his execution, but their plan fails.
Bull
manages to escape on his own, though, and goes seeking revenge against
Feathers and Rolls Royce, whom he believes have betrayed him. Just as
Bull is about to pull out his gun, however, he discovers that Feathers
and Rolls Royce had always played it straight with him, and even if
they are attracted to each other, they never did anything about it, out
of respect for him. He lets them go and surrenders to the police.
Admonished by the head of the arresting squad that his break only
gained him two hours, he smiles, saying those two hours were worth it
for what he found out.
A masterpiece of the silent era that
still holds up as an exciting and engrossing movie over 70 years later,
and which is properly regarded as the first modern American gangster
movie, Underworld has elements that anticipate such sound classics as Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, and a final shoot-out similar to those in Angels With Dirty Faces (co-starring Bancroft) and Each Dawn I Die.
Director Josef von Sternberg and cinematographer Bert Glennon
actually manage to convey sound with pure visuals in the suspenseful
jailbreak scene, and, overall, they produced a beautifully stylized
film, visually expressionistic but sentimental in tone and story. The
script, by Ben Hecht
-- a veteran Chicago reporter -- also crawls with allusions to
real-life figures, Bull Weed being a highly sanitized stand-in for Al
Capone, and "Buck" Mulligan a composite of Capone's Northside mob rival
Dion O'Bannion and his eventual successor, O'Bannion gang member George
"Bugs" Moran. |
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Cast
| George Bancroft | - "Bull" Weed | | Clive Brook | - "Rolls Royce" | | Evelyn Brent | - "Feathers" McCoy | | Larry Semon | - "Slippy" Lewis | | Fred Kohler | - "Buck" Mulligan | | Helen Lynch | - Mulligan's Girl | | Jerry Mandy | - Paloma | | Karl Morse | - "High Collar" Sam |
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