Throughout Chicago’s long and vibrant history, hundreds of movies, plays, and musicals have been set in this great city. These various theatrical art forms try and portray what the city of Chicago is like however how accurate these portrayals are is open for debate. The 1959 movie Some Like It Hot, directed by Billy Wilder, is one such movie that attempts to depict what life in 1929 gangster-ridden Chicago is like. In this classic, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, two struggling musicians in Chicago witness “Spats” Colombo’s gang murder fellow gangster “Toothpick” Charlie and the members of his gang. Director Billy Wilder did actually use Chicago’s own history in this scene, pulling his inspiration for this scene from the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Using this real historical event, the movie does a better job at portraying aspects of the gangster era in Chicago accurately.
Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre is a very real event that happened in Chicago’s history. At 2122 N Clark Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of
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Chicago, on February 14, 1929, a group of George “Bugs” Moran’s, a notorious gang leader at the time, men waited for a truck with bottles of their hijacked whiskey in it, however, Moran himself was not in attendance. As they waited, a police car quietly pulled up to the warehouse at which Bugs’’ operation was stationed out of. Four men stepped from the vehicle, two were in police uniforms, and two were in regular clothes. They entered the building and lined up Moran’s men at the back wall of the warehouse. They then proceeded to shoot them all, first aiming for the head, then aiming for the chest and lastly aiming for their stomachs. While the actual shooters were never apprehended, it is believed that they were composed of the gang leader, Al Capone’s men. Moran suspected that Capone was behind this attack, as they were rivals. This vicious attack was a part of the struggle between two of the gangs in Chicago, the North Side Irish American gang lead by Moran, and the South Side Italian gang led by Al Capone, who both wanted to take over and be the head organized crime throughout the city. In the movie Some Like It Hot, the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre plays a key role in the development of the plot. In the film, the two main characters, Joe, and Jerry are picking up a car from a garage run by “Toothpick” Charlie a leader of a gang in Chicago. As Joe and Jerry are waiting, another gangster, “Spats” Colombo, and his crew drive into Toothpick’s garage, surprising everyone. Spats’ gang then proceeds to line up Toothpick and his men, and viscously shoot them all execution style. While this is happening, Joe and Jerry are hiding behind a car watching everything, but they are then noticed by one of Spats’ men. They are then forced to move into the open and think they are about to be shot so there will be no witnesses. However, Toothpick’s struggle to try and reach for the telephone momentarily distracts the men and Jerry and Joe are able to run out of the garage and away from the gang. But because of Spats’ large crime network in Chicago, the two of them do not feel safe staying in the city and devise an elaborate plan to escape to Florida, joining an all female band dressed as women. The movie follows the actual events of the massacre fairly closely, with things added or changed here and there to create an even more dramatic scene. The director chose to change the names of Moran and Capone to Toothpick and Spats and injected the story with elements that would support having witnesses to this crime. The real massacre took place in a warehouse where Moran’s gang had part of the operation stationed and where hanging out waiting for a delivery, and it wouldn’t make much sense for outsiders to be present there. So in order to have the story line for the rest of the film the director needed to change the location to a place that is more conducive to having witnesses present. He changed the location of the massacre to a fictional garage that Toothpick runs, which allows having two witnesses to the crime. The other notable thing that the director changed was the fact that he included “Toothpick” Charlie, the movie version of “Bugs” Moran, in those who died in the shooting. In the real Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Moran, who was late to the meeting, left the area of the warehouse when he saw he police car parked out front and wasn’t even present and so he remained unharmed while his men died. Another thing that the director did was he had “Spats” Colombo accompany his men to the shooting and even had him fire the final shots that killed Toothpick. Whereas, in real life, Al Capone was in Florida at the time of the killing, so was not present. Wilder may have chosen to add the leaders into the scene to make the movie more dramatic, and to clearly show the clash between the two large gangs of Chicago. It wouldn’t be as interesting of a scene if the bosses weren’t there, and it had just been some lower level cronies doing their dirty work, even though that’s more typical of how gangs actually worked. Another thing that the movie version changes is the reason that Spats murders Toothpick and his men. In real life, it was mostly just a random killing, something to assert dominance and to weaken the competition. But in the movie, Spats goes after Toothpick because Toothpick talked to the police about Spats’ activity. In 1929, it was the prohibition era in Chicago, so speakeasies were very popular for citizens looking for alcohol and were huge moneymakers for gangs. At the beginning on the movie, we see Toothpick standing outside a funeral home that was a front for one of Spats’ speakeasies. He tips off the cops both that the speakeasy is there and this Spats owns it. Spats then figures it out that it was Toothpick that helped the police with their raid and decides to get revenge on him. While Some Like It Hot does overall stick to the general story of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, it does change quite a few details to make the scene more dramatic and to make it work with the rest of the plot of the movie. Some Like It Hot is partially set in Chicago and the part of the movie that makes this the clearest in the murder scene.
In the rest of the parts set in Chicago, it really could be any city in the north. It’s just generically cold and windy and city like in the scenes set in the city and the only way you would know it was Chicago is by the beginning when “Chicago, 1929” pops up on the screen. There is nothing that specific to Chicago until you get to the garage scene. Without this scene and its direct influences from the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, this movie really could be set “nowhere”. However, this scene makes the movie clearly set in Chicago in 1929 when this massacre took place. Since it directly references a point in history, it really could not be set anywhere else except for in Chicago. With the details of this scene, this part of the movie does really take place at a certain time at a certain
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The play takes place in Hillsboro. It is a small fictional town that is meant to resemble Dayton, Tennessee, where the Scopes trial was held in 1925.
As the 1920’s came to a close and America was in the midst of the Great Depression, a new genre of film was becoming popular. With 1928’s Lights of New York the “gangster” film genre as we know it today was born. Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (1931) were also highly influential and set the scene for the modern gangster film. The culmination of the gangster genre came about a year later. Howard Hawks’ Scarface (1932), is one of the boldest and most political gangster films ever made. Many changes were made by industry censor boards due to the diabolical nature of the film. Most notably, all scenes that contained shots of blood were removed and a subtitle was tacked onto the film denoting it as Scarface: The Shame of the Nation. Considered
I read a book about the Boston Massacre the was originally named the bloody massacre. The amount of killed persons is generally accepted to be 5 people. The Fifth of March is a 1993 novel about the Boston Massacre (of March 5, 1770) by historian and author Ann Rinaldi, who was also the author of many other historical fiction novels such as Girl in Blue and A Break with Charity. This book is about a young indentured servant girl named Rachel Marsh who finds herself changing as she meets many people, including young Matthew Kilroy, a British private in the 29th regiment.
Boston Massacre Historical Society. Boston Massacre Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2009.
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
The movie Gangs of New York takes place in Lower Manhattan’s Five Points’ neighborhood. It begins in 1846. The main protagonist Amsterdam Fallon, Priest Fallon’s son, watches his father who is the leader of the Dead Rabbit gang prepare and die in battle. As his father is on his last breadths of life giving his son counsel, Billy “the Butcher” Cutting snaps the Priest Fallon’s head. Amsterdam runs away from Cuttings henchmen to hide his father’s knife before he is captured by the Natives gang. He is taken to Hellgate orphanage. In 1862 Amsterdam returns to Five Point’s neighborhood and finds his old friend Johnny Sirocco. Johnny works now for Billy “the Butcher” and introduces Amsterdam to Cutting. Amsterdam makes his way into Cutting’s inner circle of Natives. Amsterdam also meets Jenny Everdeane while hanging out with Johnny. She bumps into Johnny to pickpocket his watch. Amsterdam notices and lets Johnny know. Johnny claims he always lets her take things. As both Cutting and Jenny take a liking to Amsterdam Johnny becomes jealous. He notices young Vallon quickly making his way into Cutting’s gang’s high ranks and into Jenny’s heart. Out of jealousy, Johnny reveals Amsterdam’s true identity to Cutting. Cutting decides to make Vallon angry. He succeeds by playing a dangerous game that involves knives with Jenny at the annual celebration of Priests Vallon’s death. Amsterdam then attempts to assassinate Cutting but fails and is taught a lesson by Cutting. Amsterdam lives at the help of Jenny. To avenge his father he starts the outlawed Dead Rabbit gang up again. He proposes a challenge to Cutting after his friend “Monk” McGinn is killed by Cutting. The fight takes place at Five Points’ neighborhood on the day the ...
"FBI: Chicago officially America's murder capital." Fox News. FOX News Network, 19 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind.
known as the bloodiest day in American history because there was one casualty every 2 seconds
The director Antoine Fuqua vision for this film was to bring that intense love-hate relationship onto the big screen and showcase it for the world to see. To ensure a convincing film setting, Fuqua shot on location in some of the most hardcore neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Fuqua also wanted to show the daily struggles of officers tasked to work in the rougher neighborhoods of cities and how easy it can be to get caught up in a street life filled with killers and drug dealers. Overall the film displayed the city of Los Angeles in a different perspective. One which m...
To Kill A Mockingbird is set in a small town in Maycomb County. Alabama, in the 1930s, which was a dark period in time for America. it had been hit by the Depression. Up until 1929, America had been. doing very well, becoming a much richer country.
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder 1950) explores the intermingling of public and private realms, puncturing the illusion of the former and unveiling the grim and often disturbing reality of the latter. By delving into the personal delusions of its characters and showing the devastation caused by disrupting those fantasies, the film provides not only a commentary on the industry of which it is a product but also a shared anxiety about the corrupting influence of external perception. Narrated by a dead man, centering on a recluse tortured by her own former stardom, and concerning a once-promising director who refuses to believe his greatest star could ever be forgotten, the work dissects a multitude of illusory folds to reveal an ultimately undesirable truth. Its fundamental conflict lies in the compartmentalization that allows the downtrodden to hope and carry on. Sunset Boulevard carefully considers the intricate honeycombs of dishonesty and deception that constitute a human life, then dissolves the barriers and watches the emotions, lies, and self-contradictions slurry together and react in often volatile and destructive ways.
The Godfather is most notably one of the most prolific films of its time. This "gangster" film displayed many transformations of permeating color to give the viewer observable cues in its mise en scene that drew one right into the movie. The dramatic acting set the tone of the film with a score that lifted the viewer right out of their seat in many scenes. The directing and cinematography made The Godfather ahead of its time. The nostalgic feel of family importance and the danger of revenge lets us into the life of the Mafia. Even though no other techniques would have given the viewer a feeling of inside the mob like the mise en scene of the power the godfather held, the characters are reinforced literally and figuratively because the story views the Mafia from the inside out, and the cinematography of the film gives it a dangerous and nostalgic feel.
“Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot—the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.” Billy Wilder once stated these powerful and controversial words in The Art of Screenwriting. Wilder clearly favored his writing aspect to all other areas of film, and although talented in many other respects, his films most often reflected this, with every other component of his films lending to the story itself. Although Billy Wilder is absence in the world of film today, his presence is still very much felt with many directors emulating his style. One director who has had particular success in this field has recently gained a larger fan base due to his implementation of techniques that Wilder himself loved to toy with is David O. Russell, who since 2010, although
A homicide is the killing of one human being by another or a person who kills another; murderer. Here are some examples of a street crime that took place in Chicago, IL earlier this month. In West Englewood and West Garfield Park each recorded a gunshot homicide. In West Englewood, a 35-year-old man was shot to death Saturday in the 2000 block of West 67th Street. There have been two recorded homicides in West Englewood this year. The South Side community area logged 21 homicides last year, up from 19 homicides in 2012, (Four Chicago Homicides in Last Week). In West Garfield Park, a 21-year-old man was fatally shot March 13 in the 4000 block of West Van Buren Street. There have been four homicides reordered this year in West Garfield Park. The West Side community area logged 16 homicides last year, up from 13 homicides in 2012, (Four...