7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The ambitious criminal Rico moves from the country to the big city in the east and joins Sam Vettori's gang with his friend Joe Massara. Soon he becomes the leader of the gangsters, known as Little Caesar.
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell, William Collier, Jr., Sidney BlackmerDrama | 100% |
Crime | 15% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.32:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono (Spain)
German: Dolby Digital Mono
English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Note: "Little Caesar" is available either separately or as part of the Warner Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics. Edward G. Robinson had a long and fruitful acting career, creating an array of indelible portraits that included the insurance investigator Barton Keys in Double Indemnity, the wily gambler Lancy Howard in The Cincinnati Kid and the aging, nostalgic investigator Sol Roth in Soylent Green (his final role). But no character more defined Robinson than his early portrayal of Caesar Enrico Bandello, known on the streets first as "Rico" and eventually as "Little Caesar" in the 1931 film of the same name. Together with such early classics as The Public Enemy (1932) and the original Scarface (1932), Little Caesar drew the broad outlines of the gangster film that later masters like Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese have since painted with ever more detail. Watch Little Caesar, and you can easily spot the progenitors of the famous shot in Goodfellas where Scorsese introduces the rogues gallery of gang members with his roving camera, or how Coppola stages a climactic execution on the courthouse steps in the first Godfather. Like the criminal organizations they depict, gangster films have a strong sense of tradition. That Robinson feared being typecast for Rico is a tribute to how well he did his job. Viewed objectively, Little Caesar is not a particularly good film. The plot is sketchy, much of the supporting cast is wooden, and there's none of that sense one gets from the best crime stories of how illegal enterprises operate and what allows them to flourish. If not for Robinson's boundless energy, his ability to radiate Rico's relentless drive to succeed as a kingpin, even from the edge of the frame, Little Caesar would have been forgotten. Instead, Rico became an icon, popping up routinely in Warner Brothers cartoons, where a mere sketch of Robinson's distinctively round features and a few drawn-out syllables were enough to evoke Rico's menace. Robinson's work in Little Caesar epitomized the advice of the unknown film director who is said to have advised his actors: "Get into the frame and do something interesting."
The major issues with Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Little Caesar are inseparable from the source material, which, despite efforts at clean-up, still suffers from obvious damage. A significant number of vertical scratches last anywhere from a few seconds to half a minute. None of them renders any of the image unwatchable, but they are quite noticeable. Frames are missing in several spots, causing obvious jumps. Fortunately, none of these breaks occur at key moments in the drama. For the rest, Warner has provided a nicely film-like transfer, with natural-looking grain, deep blacks, well-balanced contrast allowing proper delineation of shades of gray, and reasonably good detail for a film of this vintage. The quality of the image varies from somewhat soft to astonishingly sharp (e.g., in a sequence of a funeral procession). I was not at all surprised to see the average bitrate come in at 29.34 Mbps. With the film in black-and-white and substantial screen space devoted to the black "windowbox" bars, major compression should not be an issue with this 79-minute film. Barring the discovery of superior elements, or a laborious frame-by-frame repair of the damaged sections, Little Caesar is unlikely to look better.
The film's mono soundtrack is encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0, and it's a pleasure to hear Robinson's distinctive speech patterns as Rico at such high fidelity. The clarity doesn't do all that much of the rest of the dialogue a favor, though, because many of the remaining performances are quite weak. However, Thomas E. Jackson's turn as the sarcastic Lt. Flaherty—the second best performance in the film—comes through better than I've ever heard it before. The various pistols and machine guns don't have anything like the punch of today's movie weaponry, but they make enough of a statement for a gangster film of this era. The sparely used underscoring has been attributed to composer David Mendoza, who is uncredited.
The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2004 DVD.
Like Scarface, the novel of Little Caesar by W.R. Burnett was inspired by Al Capone's rapid ascent to the pinnacle of Chicago's criminal empire. Capone's ruthlessness, his penchant for flaunting his activities and his status as a semi-celebrity sparked the imagination of more than a few writers, actors and directors. But even if Capone was ultimately undone by his refusal to keep a low profile, he had a certain native shrewdness that one never sees in Robinson's Rico. Rico is the first in a long line of movie gangsters who are more id than intelligence. His successors include Sonny Corleone and Goodfellas' Tommy DeVito, who share Rico's intimidating temper and routinely use violence when lesser means would accomplish their goal more quietly. Such characters always end badly in gangster movies, either because at some point they're outmatched or because their own organization ultimately decides they are a liability. Despite some video issues, Little Caesar is recommended.
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