Directed by: Max Nosseck.
Written By: Philip Yordan & William Castle (uncredited).
Starring: Lawrence Tierney (John Dillinger), Edmund Lowe (Specs Green), Anne Jeffreys (Helen Rogers), Eduardo Ciannelli (Marco Minelli),Marc Lawrence (Doc Madison), Elisha Cook Jr. (Kirk Otto), Ralph Lewis (Tony).Dillinger (1973) ***
Directed by: John Milius
Written By: John Milius.
Starring: Warren Oates (John Dillinger), Ben Johnson (Melvin Purvis), Michelle Phillips (Billie Frechette), Cloris Leachman (Anna Sage), Harry Dean Stanton (Homer Van Meter), Geoffrey Lewis (Harry Pierpont), John P. Ryan (Charles Mackley), Richard Dreyfuss (Baby Face Nelson), Steve Kanaly (Pretty Boy Floyd).
If you read my 40 most anticipated films of 2009 postings, you’ll recall that Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, focusing on Johnny Depp playing John Dillinger, is my most highly anticipated film of 2009. Although the IMDB lists more than 15 credits for someone playing John Dillinger in various TV shows and movies over the years, it seems like the general consensus is that Max Nosseck’s 1945 film Dillinger and John Millus’ 1973 film of the same name (although this isn’t a remake) are the most highly regarded on the lot. So I figured I would go back and check both films out to get myself geared up for Mann’s film (which after all, doesn’t up until July).
The 1945 film is more of a straight ahead, B-gangster movie. At only 70 minutes, the film barely feels like its warming up before it winds down. Starring Lawrence Tierney (who is probably best known, at least to modern audiences, as Joe, the old man who who assembles the team to pull off the jewel store robbery in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs) as Dillinger, in his debut performance no less, the film in a highly fictionalized account of Dillinger’s criminal career. Dillinger starts out robbing people simply to be able to by his girl a drink at a local bar. Of course, things go poorly, and Dillinger falls in with the “wrong crowd”. Once they all get out (Dillinger because his sentence is up, the rest of the gang because Dillinger helps them from the outside. they start robbing banks. A power struggle ensues between Dillinger, who soon becomes the most famous of the gang members and Specs Green (Edmund Lowe), who had always been the leader. The movie sticks mostly to the established events, but changes just about everything for characters names, to the order of events and even Dillinger’s personality.
The 1973 film is certainly a little more extensive and accurate. This time, Dillinger isn’t the only character to have his own name - there is his gang Homer Van Meter (Harry Dead Stanton), Harry Pierepont (Geoffrey Lewis), Charles Mackley (John Ryan) and the more famous Baby Face Nelson (Richard Dreyfuss) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Steve Kanaly). Unlike the 1945 version, this one also focuses on the FBI agents tracking Dillinger, namely Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson), who is assigned by Hoover to catch Dillinger, and won’t stop until he does. The film is also much more violent than the previous film - the violent shootouts in the film are actually a highlight of the film.
What neither film really does is truly capture Dillinger as he truly was. The 1945 film totally negates Dillinger’s innate charm, and turns the violence averse man into a cold blooded murderer - somehow who will kill without feeling or remorse. In reality, Dillinger didn’t actually kill very many people, always felt bad it when he did, and would even deny it when asked, even though everyone knew who he killed. Tierney plays Dillinger as increasingly cold and emotionless. While he starts out loving Helen Rogers (Anne Jeffreys), by the end, he doesn’t even care for her.
The 1973 version tries harder to capture this side of Dillinger. He never loses his love for Billie Frenchette (Michelle Phillips), and is actually quite kind to her, even if there relationship starts out very violently. Warren Oates has more sympathy for Dillinger. True, he still kills when has to, but he doesn’t enjoy it. When Baby Face Nelson tries to tell him that the best way to rob a bank is to kill everyone in the place, Dillinger kicks the crap out of him.
Both movies are definitely a product of the time they were made. In 1945, you never really saw that many movies that sympathized with the bad guys. The bad guys were bad from beginning to end, and it ended with their inevitable punishment, so that the audience would see that Crime Doesn’t Pay. And the movie does precisely that, and it does it well. Nosseck is a fine director, and the film looks wonderful in black and white. Even if some of the robbery scenes are lifted from stock footage shot by Fritz Lang, they still work. Besides the bank robbery sequences aren’t really the point of the film. Instead it’s to show Dillinger as the bad guy, and Tierney plays his role to perfection.
By 1973, violence and sympathy for the outlaw were in vogue. There is no doubt that the film tried to cash in on the appeal of Bonnie & Clyde, Arthur Penn’s 1967 masterpiece. But Millus’ film never really approaches that level. Sure, the shootouts are quite well done, and the performances are all top notch. But the film is a little simplistic - Dillinger and Purvis are painted as opposites, yet equal. They are manly men, whose pride will not let them give up. Millis has returned to this theme time and again in his career. While Dillinger may be his best film as a director (although, I will always have a soft spot for the right wing paranoia Red Dawn), it still doesn’t live up to the best of the films of the era.
In short, both version of Dillinger are solid B-movies, ones that definitely reflect their time and place. Yes, both films have aged, and probably don’t have the impact they once had, but are still fine films. Perhaps the best portrait of Dillinger on screen belongs to Humphrey Bogart, who played a gangster based on Dillinger in The Petrified Forest. That film came closer to capturing a more true to life Dillinger than either of these do. But there still has not been the definitive Dillinger film made yet - one can only hope that Mann nails it this July.
Note: Another film I will try and watch before the release of Public Enemies is The FBI Story with Jimmy Stewart, which tries to sketch the same period from the point of view of the FBI. Stayed tuned, as I will try and post a review of it within the next few weeks.
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