Underworld

Sternberg, 1927: the gangster picture before the Code, before sound, before Cagney. George Bancroft is Bull Weed; Evelyn Brent is Feathers; Clive Brook is the drunk lawyer they pick up. Paramount, from a Ben Hecht story. Sternberg lights a Chicago that is all rain and interiors. It invented the Hollywood gangster as a man who is already dead and hasn't sat down yet. Won the first writing Oscar for Hecht. Bancroft's laugh is the gun.