The Public Enemy

By Tino T. Balio and Hanry Cohen

Book Overview

The Public Enemy, a 1931 Warner Brothers gangster classic, is easily remembered as the movie in which James Cagney used Mae Clarke's nose as a grapefruit grinder. As Cagney recalls, it was just about the first time that "a woman had been treated like a broad on the screen, instead of like a delicate flower."
The ambivalence toward women is just one of the many stylistic contradictions that make The Public Enemy worth studying, not only for its intrinsic merits but also as a creative expression bending under the constraints of censorship.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299084647
• ISBN13: 9780299084646
• Release Date: May 1981
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.6" x 8.3"