FREE: VHS "LITTLE CAESAR" 1930 TOUGH GUY, EDWARG G. ROBINSON, DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR..

The listing, VHS "LITTLE CAESAR" 1930 TOUGH GUY, EDWARG G. ROBINSON, DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR.. has ended.

t is too easy to view LITTLE CAESAR and to laugh at the often caricatured voice of Edward G. Robinson as the small time hood who clawed a rapid rise to the top of Chicago's underworld only to tumble equally fast. What the modern viewer may fail to grasp is that when LITTLE CAESAR was released in 1930 Robinson was no star and the gangster movie did not exist as a genre. With his menacing voice and tough guy attitude, Robinson changed all that. It is because of him that later cinema gangsters like Pacino and Brando could strut their stuff.
At the beginning of the film, Robinson is Rico Bandello, the 'Little Caesar.' He drifts into Chicago and invites himself as a member of the ruling gang. Even then, with nothing but his gravitas and physical presence, he could take words that were meant to be conciliating and twist them into a snarl laden with menace. What I found interesting was that whenever Robinson went face to face with an adversary, Robinson forced him to look down at his own diminutive height as if to say, 'Your size means nothing, fool.' It becomes soon clear that the mob boss will surrender his place through default. Rico Bandello manages to cram into little more than an hour a case study in the ephemerality of the solitary gangster who relies more on his brutal personality than on some hired brains to run his criminal enterprise.
On a technical note, the sound track was at times incomprehensible, an excusable flaw since sound engineering had just begun the year before. Further, the dialogue sounds incredibly cliched, but again, to the audience of 1930, Rico's words were jarringly original. When a gasping, dying, Little Caesar spits out as a last snarl of defiance, 'Is this the end of Rico?',.
VG condition with only slightly scuffed corners from storage. Tiny price tag on one spine from 2004. Lookin real good!