SCARFACE was a study of a truly monstrous, violent malefactor - a kingpin of crime. LITTLE CAESAR too deals with the rise of a criminal to being the head of the criminal organization (or a leading figure in it) before he too falls. It has been nicely compared to a modern version of Andrew Carnegie's philosophy of self-help, improvement, and modernizing your business organization. But THE PUBLIC ENEMY was a type of modern version of the William Hogarth series of prints about the Good and Bad apprentices. The prints (I think there were ten) showed two boys who are raised side by side in a poor area of London. But one is hard working and industrious, and the other is lazy and opportunistic, and vicious. The hard working one slowly rises in the world as he prospers, and the bad one slowly becomes a criminal. In the long run the good one becomes the Lord Mayor of London, and the bad one ends up on the gallows for murder. <br /><br />Tom Powers (Jimmy Cagney) is the "bad apprentice" and his brother Mike (Donald Cook) the "good apprentice" but the story is more twisted than Hogarth's straightforward story suggests. The two brothers are the sons of a strict father (a policeman) and an overly sentimental mother: Beryl Mercer. Mercer is not one of my favorite actresses (all her major roles are incredibly teary women, usually mothers - her acting must have been acceptable in the 1930s, but is hardly worthwhile in the 2000s). However, here her performance actually fits. She favors Tom! She is obviously a weak type - her husband was the dominant figure in the family. Once he left, she could not bring herself to punish Tom - as he deserved to be. Instead she let him run wild. She also barely appreciates Mike's sacrifices (he goes to fight in World War I, and gets gassed, and while Tom's material wealth increases due to crime, Mike is only able to get a job as a streetcar conductor). At the conclusion of the film, one wonders what the death of Tom is going to do to her. Probably it will kill her.<br /><br />Tom and his friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) graduate from petty thefts for the gang run by "Putty Nose" (Murray Kinnell). He leaves them in a lurch, and yet they continue their criminal rise as pals. We see them bullying a speakeasy owner in using their brand of beer (Tom really enjoying enjoying it, by the way). Later we see their use as killers for gangsters. Eventually they even the score with "Putty Nose", who pleads for his life when they catch with him. By that time they are working for Nails Nathan, getting nicer apartments, better clothing, and money to buy gifts for Mom (and to show up brother Mike). Tom and Matt move from common whores to molls (Tom's is Mae Clarke - who gets the grapefruit treatment in the film's best recalled sequence). Then Tom meets a classier dame: the slumming socialite Gwen Allen (Jean Harlow). <br /><br />The scenes between Cagney and Harlow are too few to really judge any screen chemistry by. Harlow's character is a measuring stick, showing the highpoint of Tom's rise in the world through crime. Sadly, after this film, they never were re-teamed again. Her future partners were Gable, Beery, Tone, and others on the MGM lot, not the Warner's lot.<br /><br />The death of Nathan leads to the slow disintegration of the gang, beginning with the death of Matt in a street assassination that Tom escapes. But at the end of the line for Tom is in avenging his friend: he obviously has killed or seriously wounded many in the shootout, but he gets badly wounded himself. And in the end he does get kidnapped from the hospital, and is dumped, dead, on his doorstep. Mike discovers his corpse. I don't envy him - he'll have to tell what happened to his mother who is busy preparing Tommy's room up stairs.