The Death of the Big Shot: the Gangster in the 1940s

Abstract

With the exception of High Sierra the gangster movie of the early 1940s has received little attention. Like the films of the late 1930s it has either been ignored or seen as an interlude between the classic gangster movie of the 1930’s and the development of film noir in the immediate postwar years. High Sierra has received a great deal of attention because it has been seen as a bridge between the 1930s and the gangster noir narratives of the 1940s, looking back to the former (in its representation of the tragic gangster) while preparing the way for film noir in its depiction of a new America of alienation (Shadoian, 1977: 59–66; Clarens, 1980: 168). While the gangster film of the early 1940s has been overshadowed by the rise of film noir, this period is nevertheless interesting for its creation of the ‘death of the big shot’ formula and for its other variations. The first wave of gangster cycles ended with the films that were in production at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 (Johnny Eager and The Big Shot). The gangster film was not a major genre during the War, as Schatz’ outline of major trends in genre and production indicates in Boom and Bust¹ and tended toward the gangsterversus-Nazi variety, such as Lucky Jordan (1942) and All Through the Night (1942).