Americans may proclaim their devotion to law and order, but crime has been an irresistible lure at the box office for virtually the entire history of motion pictures. Criminal behavior has been so pervasive in movies that readers are referred to the following genre articles for a fuller understanding of crime in film: Thrillers, Action Movies, Prison Films, Mysteries, and Film Noir. This study of crime as a genre focuses on the gangster film, with a look at two important sub-genres that emerged in the 1950s: the caper or heist film and the juvenile-delinquent film.

As with so much else in American cinema, the first landmarks of the crime genre come from the great writer/director D.W. Griffith. His short The Musketeers Of Pig Alley (1912) examined urban violence and lawlessness, the poverty of slum life, and police corruption. In the modern story of his epic masterpiece Intolerance (1916) -- released independently in 1919 as The Mother And The Law -- Griffith again showed how the city's poor are drawn into crime. Raoul Walsh, a Griffith protégé who would later direct many outstanding crime films, also examined the gangster's slum origins in The Regeneration (1915). But apart from action-filled serials and melodramatic exposés of white slavery and opium dens, silent films steered clear of the mobsters who were flourishing in '20s America, thanks to Prohibition. The gangster film as we've come to know it -- a violent, rapacious anti-hero whose challenge to society ends in death -- emerged at the end of the silent era, with director Josef von Sternberg's Underworld (1927). Written by Ben Hecht and starring George Bancroft and Clive Brook, the film codified such genre staples as the gangster's moll and the climactic shoot-out with police. Other silent gangster films include The City Gone Wild (1927), directed by James Cruze; von Sternberg's The Dragnet (1928), with William Powell; Dressed To Kill (1928); Forbidden Faces (1928) with Brook and Powell; and Romance Of The Underworld (1928).

The first all-talking film, The Lights Of New York (1928), was a gangster tale, but the newness of the technology kept action to a minimum. As sound developed, it brought greater realism and intensity to crime films such as Thunderbolt (1929), directed by von Sternberg, and Born Reckless (1930), directed by John Ford. In 1931, Warner Bros. released two films that became instant classics of the genre: Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. Little Caesar, adapted from W.R. Burnett's novel and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, starred Edward G. Robinson as mobster Cesare Rico Bandello. Robinson, who'd already played a racketeer in The Widow From Chicago (1930), made an indelible impression with Rico's violent rise and fall. The Public Enemy, directed by William A. Wellman, traced the equally bloody career arc of an Irish-American gangster, played by James Cagney in a performance as iconic as Robinson's was. (Cagney too had established his criminal credentials the previous year, with Sinner's Holiday and Doorway To Hell.) His Tom Powers bristles with youth and volatility, a diametric opposite to Robinson's glowering intensity. The public embraced both actors, and they returned to the crime genre throughout their careers. The immediate follow-up was Smart Money (1931), with Cagney supporting Robinson in their only appearance together. Robinson went on to play a Chinese killer in The Hatchet Man (1932) for director William A. Wellman; Cagney starred in Lady Killer (1933) for Roy Del Ruth. Soon both actors were also spoofing their villainy: Cagney in Jimmy The Gent (1934), directed by Michael Curtiz, and Robinson in The Whole Town's Talking (1935), directed by John Ford from a W.R. Burnett novel.

Many other '30s actors established their careers playing gangsters. Paul Muni became a Hollywood star in the role of the totally corrupt and vicious Tony Camonte in the classic Scarface (1932), directed by Howard Hawks and written by (among others) Hecht and Burnett. Clark Gable scored playing gangsters in The Finger Points (1931), A Free Soul (1931), and Manhattan Melodrama (1934). In his second feature Quick Millions (1931), Spencer Tracy went from truck driver to racketeer. But it was Humphrey Bogart who brought to his criminal roles the unforgettable, career-sustaining impact of Robinson and Cagney. After re-creating for Warner Bros. his stage triumph as escaped killer Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), Bogart found steady work at the studio playing hoods in such films as Dead End (1937), directed by William Wyler from the Lillian Hellman play, Racket Busters (1938), King Of The Underworld (1939), You Can't Get Away With Murder (1939), and Invisible Stripes (1939). Still a junior member in Warners' Murderers Row, Bogart was always eliminated by his elders: Robinson defeats him in Bullets Or Ballots (1936) and the sardonic The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse (1938), directed by Anatole Litvak; Cagney kills his untrustworthy partner Bogart in two of the '30s strongest crime films, Angels With Dirty Faces (1939), directed by Michael Curtiz, and The Roaring Twenties (1939), directed by Raoul Walsh.

Other stand-outs among the many gangster films of the 1930s include the Burnett adaptation The Beast Of The City (1931); This Day And Age (1933), directed by Cecil B. De Mille, with Charles Bickford as a racketeer defeated by young vigilantes; and Show Them No Mercy! (1935), directed by George Marshall. Director Fritz Lang's second American film was the classic You Only Live Once (1937), with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney as a sympathetic couple on the run, inspired by the real-life criminals Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. By the start of World War Two, Robinson and Cagney had stopped playing hoods (except for Robinson's spoofs Brother Orchid, 1940, and Larceny, Inc., 1942). Bogart, however, found stardom as the kind-hearted gangster Roy Earle in the exciting, character-driven High Sierra (1941), directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from a Burnett novel by John Huston. Bogart also kidded his criminal persona with the comic All Through The Night (1942). Other memorable wartime crime films include director Henry Hathaway's Johnny Apollo (1940), with Edward Arnold and Tyrone Power as father-and-son criminals; Out Of The Fog (1941), directed by Anatole Litvak and starring John Garfield; Lady Scarface (1941), with Judith Anderson as a tough female gangster; Johnny Eager (1941), directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Robert Taylor; and This Gun For Hire (1943), adapted by W.R. Burnett and Albert Maltz from a Graham Greene novel, with Alan Ladd as a sympathetic hit man.

The public appetite for crime increased after the war, and fed on Kiss Of Death (1947), directed by Henry Hathaway, with newcomer Richard Widmark making a sensation as the giggling psychopath Tommy Udo; The Gangster (1947), starring Barry Sullivan; The Dark Past (1948), with psychiatrist Lee J. Cobb probing the mind of criminal William Holden; Thieves' Highway (1949), directed by Jules Dassin; and director Don Siegel's The Big Steal (1949), starring Robert Mitchum. The classics of the era saw the return of the old pros. Robinson gave his definitive performance as the monstrous Johnny Rocco, a mobster who always wants "more," in John Huston's Key Largo (1948); Bogart was the Army vet who guns him down. Cagney also surpassed himself as the psychotic, mother-fixated Cody Jarrett, a killer subject to blinding migraines, in the violent White Heat (1949), directed by Raoul Walsh.

The 1950s witnessed the birth of the caper film in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), John Huston's classic adaptation of W.R. Burnett's novel, which scrutinized the meticulous planning and execution of a jewel-store robbery -- and its disastrous aftermath. This three-part structure remains the model for subsequent caper films, including Jules Dassin's Rififi (1954); Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1955); Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), produced and directed by Robert Wise and starring Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan; and the caper spoofs The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), starring Alec Guiness, and Mario Monicelli's Big Deal On Madonna Street (1958).

The decade's other new sub-genre was initiated by Rebel Without A Cause (1955), directed by Nicholas Ray and written by Stewart Stern. A box-office hit, with nuanced, affecting performances by James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo, the film prompted numerous stories of young people drawn into crime. Mineo starred in two of the best, both written by Reginald Rose: Crime In The Streets (1956), directed by Don Siegel and co-starring John Cassavetes and Mark Rydell, and Dino (1957). High School Confidential! (1958), directed by Jack Arnold, is a fondly remembered cautionary tale of teens, drugs, and crime, but fans of the genre also look to the girl-gang tale The Violent Years (1956), written by Ed Wood; director Robert Altman's first effort, The Delinquents (1957), with Tom Laughlin; producer/director Roger Corman's Teenage Doll (1957); and Jack Nicholson's debut performance as The Cry Baby Killer (1958), also produced by Corman.

Several outstanding actors made their final bows in the crime genre during the '50s. John Garfield played a killer on the lam in his last film, He Ran All The Way (1951). Bogart's final bad-guy role was as a vicious escaped convict in producer/director William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955). Cagney's last gangster was the real-life racketeer Martin "The Gimp" Snyder opposite Doris Day's Ruth Etting in Love Me Or Leave Me (1955). But fresh blood was still pumping through crime, with important '50s releases such as The Big Heat (1953), directed by Fritz Lang; director Richard Fleischer's The Narrow Margin (1952) and Violent Saturday (1955); Black Tuesday (1954) and Hell On Frisco Bay (1956), both starring Edward G. Robinson; director Don Siegel's Private Hell 36 (1954) and The Lineup (1958); Samuel Fuller's House Of Bamboo (1955) and The Crimson Kimono (1959); and Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur (1955). Tales of real mobsters also proliferated, with Mickey Rooney as Baby Face Nelson (1957) for director Don Siegel; Charles Bronson as Machine Gun Kelly (1958) for producer/director Roger Corman; Dorothy Provine in the Clyde-less The Bonnie Parker Story (1958); and Rod Steiger as Al Capone (1959).

Edward G. Robinson made his final appearances on the wrong side of the law in the caper films Seven Thieves (1960), Grand Slam (1967), It's Your Move (1967, aka Mad Checkmate), and Operation St. Peter's (1967). But the best heist movie of the '60s was the exciting, literate The League Of Gentlemen, directed by Basil Dearden and written by Bryan Forbes. Other caper films usually kidded the genre to varying degrees, from the subtle wit of Topkapi (1965), produced and directed by Jules Dassin, and Gambit (1966), directed by Ronald Neame, to the flat-out comedies How To Steal A Million (1966), directed by William Wyler, and Who's Minding The Mint? (1967).

Crime remained popular in the '60s, thanks to such memorable films as Samuel Fuller's revenge tale Underworld U.S.A. (1961); Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1962, aka The Finger Man), with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Le Samourai (1967), with Alain Delon; Roger Corman's big-budget The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967); and the Mafia drama The Brotherhood (1968), directed by Martin Ritt. Lee Marvin starred in the violent actioners The Killers (1964), directed by Don Siegel, and Point Blank (1967), directed by John Boorman. The trend of gangster biopics petered out in the early '60s, with The Rise And Fall Of Legs Diamond (1960), directed by Budd Boetticher; Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960); Pretty Boy Floyd (1960); and King of The Roaring 20's -- The Story Of Arnold Rothstein (1961). But it got a new lease on life with the success of the landmark Bonnie And Clyde (1967), directed by Arthur Penn and written by David Newman and Robert Benton. Despite the film's graphic violence, stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway brought charisma and sympathy to their roles, and criminal biopics flourished over the 1970s: Larry Buchanan's A Bullet For Pretty Boy (1970), with Fabian Forte; Bloody Mama (1970), produced and directed by Roger Corman and starring Shelley Winters as Ma Barker; John Milius's Dillinger (1973), with Warren Oates; Lucky Luciano (1974), starring Gian Maria Volonte; Lepke (1975), starring Tony Curtis; Capone (1975), starring Ben Gazzara; and The Lady In Red (1979), written by John Sayles, with Robert Conrad as John Dillinger. The spirit of Bonnie And Clyde also hovered over such boy-meets-girl-meets-gun movies as Pretty Poison (1968), directed by Noel Black, with Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld; Boxcar Bertha (1972), directed by Martin Scorsese, with David Carradine and Barbara Hershey; Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973), with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek; and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us (1974), with Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall.

The 1970s enthusiasm for crime saw three memorable films set in New York: director William Friedkin's popular cop actioner The French Connection (1971); the fact-based Dog Day Afternoon (1972), directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Frank Pierson, with Al Pacino as a hostage-taking bank-robber who's trying to raise money for his boyfriend's sex-change operation; and Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), a tough look at Manhattan's petty hoods, which made stars of Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. John Frankenheimer directed two underappreciated gangster films, the satiric 99 And 44/100% Dead (1975) and the taut sequel French Connection II (1975). Directors Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg sent hoodlum James Fox into a mind- and gender-bending encounter with rocker Mick Jagger in Performance (1970). Other memorable crime films of the period include The Grissom Gang (1971), produced and directed by Robert Aldrich; The Getaway (1972), directed by Sam Peckinpah; Robert Mitchum in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973) and The Yakuza (1975); producer/director Don Siegel's Charley Varrick (1973); John Cassavetes' The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976), with Ben Gazzara and Timothy Carey; Frank Pierson's The King Of The Gypsies (1978), starring Eric Roberts; and James Toback's Fingers (1978), starring Harvey Keitel. Among the memorable '70s caper films are director Sidney Lumet's intricate The Anderson Tapes (1972); Michael Cimino's tongue-in-cheek Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974), starring Clint Eastwood; The Brinks Job (1978), directed by William Friedkin; Paul Schrader's Blue Collar (1978), with Harvey Keitel, Richard Pryor, and Yaphet Kotto as auto workers who rob their union; and Martin Brest's witty but sad Going In Style (1979), about three old men who reinvigorate their lives by robbing a bank.

Reflecting the revisionism that swept American films of the '70s, many crime films focused on police corruption. Tales of bad cops include director Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), starring Al Pacino as a real-life New York cop who informed on his crooked fellow officers; the mischievous caper tale Cops And Robbers (1973), directed by Aram Avakian; Report To The Commissioner (1975); and The Choirboys (1977), directed by Robert Aldrich from a novel by Joseph Wambaugh. Larry Cohen's The Private Files Of J. Edgar Hoover (1977) examined the cracks in the late FBI director's facade. The Offence (1973), directed by Sidney Lumet and written by John Hopkins, offered the most harrowing look at how a policeman's harsh business can erode his humanity, with Sean Connery giving the performance of his career as a British cop who interrogates a suspected child molester and ends up beating him to death.

The 1970s classics of the crime genre, however, came from Francis Coppola: The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). Coppola adapted Mario Puzo's novel into a canny blend of sentiment, violence, social criticism, and domestic tragedy, creating a beautifully filmed and edited epic about a Sicilian-American Mafia family. Marlon Brando's iconic performance as the aging patriarch Vito Corleone revitalized his career; the film also made stars of Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, and John Cazale as the Don's divided sons. Part II worked similar magic for Robert De Niro, playing the young Corleone, and Lee Strasberg, playing the elderly Jewish mobster Hyman Roth (modeled on Meyer Lansky).

The success of the Godfather films created a new wave of gangster tales which has yet to recede, although none have enjoyed the success of Coppola's films. The only work that rivaled his in scope and imagination was Sergio Leone's stylish epic of Jewish gangsters, Once Upon A Time In America (1984), starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. Director John Huston added one more classic to the genre with his black comedy Prizzi's Honor (1985), adapted from Richard Condon's satiric novel. Sidney Lumet returned to corruption among New York cops for the powerful Prince Of The City (1981), but William Friedkin failed to excite audiences with the controversial crime films Cruising (1980) and To Live And Die in L.A. (1985). Director Brian De Palma found box-office gold with his violent remake Scarface (1983), written by Oliver Stone and starring Al Pacino as a Cuban mobster, and The Untouchables (1987), written by David Mamet, with Robert De Niro in a supporting role as Al Capone. Michael Cimino, however, failed to find audiences for Year Of The Dragon (1985) and The Sicilian (1987). Even Coppola's return to crime with the gangster sequences in his musical The Cotton Club (1984) failed to make a hit. Among the better '80s crime films are the feisty Gloria (1980), directed by John Cassavetes and starring Gena Rowlands; Abel Ferrara's brutal feminist revenge tale Ms. 45 (1981); The Long Good Friday (1980) and Mona Lisa (1986), both starring Bob Hoskins; Mixed Blood (1985), director Paul Morrissey's look at drug pushers on New York's Lower East Side; and Colors (1988), director Dennis Hopper's drama of L.A. police battling street gangs.

The '90s began with two 1990 crime films that approached the stature of classics. Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta, was a sweeping, terrifying account (based on a true story) of insanity and betrayal among New York hoodlums. Francis Coppola's The Godfather, Part III, although savaged by the critics, was actually as impassioned, moving, and deftly made as its predecessors; in many ways it surpasses the earlier films, particularly with Al Pacino's stunning portrayal of the guilt-ridden, ailing Michael Corleone. No other film of the decade equaled either of these, yet the genre remained vigorous. In The Krays (1990), director Peter Medak re-created the real-life British hoodlums (and identical twins) Reginald and Ronald Kray. Other actual gangsters appeared in three 1991 American films: Dustin Hoffman was Dutch Schultz in Billy Bathgate, directed by Robert Benton; Mobsters looked at the youth of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Bugsy Siegel; and Bugsy starred Warren Beatty as the grown-up Siegel. The juvenile-delinquent film was reinvented by African-American filmmakers, depicting young and poor urban blacks drawn into violent crime: Matty Rich's Straight Out Of Brooklyn (1991), John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood (1991), Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City (1991), Ernest R. Dickerson's Juice (1992), and Allen and Albert Hughes' Menace II Society (1993) and Dead Presidents (1995). Abel Ferrara made the tough and graphic crime films The King Of New York (1990) and The Funeral (1996), both starring Christopher Walken, and Bad Lieutenant (1992), starring Harvey Keitel. Quentin Tarrantino created an even stronger impression with his stylish but brutal Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Jackie Brown (1997). Japanese actor/director Takeshi "Beat" Kitano came to specialize in violent crime films, such as Boiling Point (1991) and Sonatine (1993). Walter Hill co-scripted the remake The Getaway (1994) and co-wrote and directed Last Man Standing (1996), starring Bruce Willis. Other strong '90s crime films include Joel and Ethan Coen's stylish drama of Irish-American racketeers, Miller's Crossing (1990); the corrupt-cop tales Q & A (1990), directed by Sidney Lumet, and Cop Land (1997), with De Niro, Keitel, and Liotta; the escaped-criminal thrillers Desperate Hours (1990), directed by Michael Cimino, and A Perfect World (1993), directed by Clint Eastwood; Mad Dog And Glory (1993) and A Bronx Tale (1993), both of which cast Robert De Niro against type as a decent man confronted by gangsters; writer/director Michael Mann's Heat (1995), which cast Al Pacino against type as a cop opposing criminal De Niro; Carlito's Way (1994), directed by Brian De Palma, with Pacino as a Latino hood trying to go straight; Donnie Brasco (1997), with Italian hood Pacino fooled by undercover FBI agent Johnny Depp; and Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), reuniting De Niro and Pesci. In the tradition of Robinson and Cagney, both actors went on to spoof their criminality: Pesci with 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag (1997) and De Niro with Analyze This (1999).

Crime has continued to pay at the box office in the 21st century. Notable recent efforts include Kitano's Brother (2000); Sexy Beast (2000), with Ben Kingsley; Gangster No. 1 (2000), with Malcolm McDowell; writer/director Andrew Dominick's Chopper (2000), casting comedian Eric Bana as the real-life Australian killer Mark "Chopper" Read; Abel Ferrara's 'R Xmas (2001); The Score (2001), with De Niro and Marlon Brando; the sequel Analyze That (2002), reteaming De Niro and Billy Crystal with director Harold Ramis; director Sam Mendes' The Road To Perdition (2002), with Paul Newman and Tom Hanks; and Martin Scorsese's 19th-century epic Gangs Of New York (2002). Far from exhausting itself, crime promises to remain among the most popular genres in cinema.