Domesticating gangsters? Home/work conflicts in South Korean family drama gangster film

Gangster films are largely an urban genre set in the mean streets of metropolitan ganglands. A significant proportion of South Korean gangster films depart from this spatial convention, however, setting their central family or romance plots in the domestic space of the apartment. This article addresses the question of why we find gangsters in domestic space in South Korean cinema and examines what the domestic setting ‘does’ to the gangster film. The Show Must Go On (2008) is discussed in detail to exemplify the ways that questions of masculinity, gendered family role performance and class anxieties are crystallized around domestic space. What emerges in this spatial shift is a new sub-genre, the ‘family drama gangster film’. This form combines elements of the traditional gangster narrative with family melodrama, producing tension between the conflicting obligations of the gangster towards gang and family. The article concludes that the family drama gangster film emerged as a response to a conjunction of socio-economic and film industry factors and became a vehicle through which conflict between competing ideologies of Korean familism is negotiated, mostly resolving in favour of affective familism.

Falling Star

This chapter dissects the demise of the Hollywood studio system, caused by several factors including the incursion of television. Warner Bros.’ legendary music department became, to quote Steiner, “a ghost town”; Max was among the few composers remaining on staff. Amid constant pressure to economize, Steiner continued to do fine work. He earned Ayn Rand’s praise for his musical depiction of nonconformity in The Fountainhead, created incendiary accompaniment for James Cagney’s valedictory gangster film White Heat; and devised an evocative “glass effect in music” for The Glass Menagerie. “Steiner has written a beautiful score,” Tennessee Williams wrote Jack Warner, “one that blends perfectly with the moods of the play.” Steiner also innovated as musical supervisor of the stereo-surround blockbuster This Is Cinerama, whose panoramic image foreshadowed IMAX. But most of his assignments were cheap, forgettable programmers, and his battles with Louise over Ronald grew increasingly bitter.

Criminal Undertakings: Nicolas Winding Refn, European Film Aesthetics, and Hollywood Genre Cinema

This chapter explores Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. Refn’s first feature Pusher (1996) was a local box-office success that helped usher in the era of the Nordic crime film, which includes his own follow-up Bleeders (1998) and two Pusher sequels (2004 and 2005). His American crime and gangster film, Drive (2011), is set in Los Angeles and is indebted to notable American classics of the genre. Reunited with Hollywood star Ryan Gosling, Refn continued to explore the international pedigree of the crime thriller in Only God Forgives (2013), where Gosling plays an American struggling to stay afloat in the Bangkok underworld. In Neon Demon (2016), Refn returns to Los Angeles, this time the world of fashion, where Hollywood gloss and European film aesthetics meet head-on. His three “American” films thus offer a striking blend of Hollywood genre and European art cinema traditions helping to explain their wildly mixed receptions.

Beyond Scarface, a Kosher Capone for Maxwell Street

This chapter focuses on Lenny Patrick and the changes he had ushered into the world of Chicago’s Jewish gangsters. As someone of Jewish Lawndale, yet excluded from the real riches, he was the perfect hammer to take out the independent Jewish gangsters. Benjamin Zuckerman may have died in a scene out of a gangster film, but the bosses behind Patrick were businessmen first. They directed their killers for long-term financial gain, in a way that would give them greater leverage over the city. It was the start of a different story. And, of course, it was the end of Zuckerman’s story. Once the Syndicate decided to replace the confederation model with the corporate one, there simply was no room for him anymore.

“I Don’t Know What to Do With my Hands”

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is not a gangster film, writer-director John Cassavetes insists, but the precise rendition of a world—both everyday and larger than life. This chapter will consider what The Killing of a Chinese Bookie reveals about Cassavetes’ place in the New Hollywood. If one of the distinguishing features of this period is its filmmakers’ willingness to question motivations and suspend narrative causality, then how does Cassavetes’ rendition of the entanglements of a small-time strip club owner complicate or confirm this interpretation? In pursuing this and other questions, this chapter will consider the connections between The Killing of Chinese Bookie and other films in the director’s oeuvre as well as its affiliation to one of the era’s most important re-workings of the gangster film: Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976).