The first American made gangster movie, and "Goodfellas," Scorcese's modern favorite.
By the mid-1990s Mr. Gandolfini had made gangster roles a specialty, playing burly but strangely charming tough guys in films like "True Romance" (1993) and "The Juror" (1996).
(When a mobster like Al Capone announced, on his way to prison, that studios should stop making gangster films because "they're doing nothing but harm to the younger element," the handwriting was on the wall).
They took these films so deeply into themselves that they began to see themselves in them, and made gangster films, comedies, and musicals that were filled with the stuff of their own lives and were turned into the very style of cinematic autobiography.
Death Row, the West Coast outfit that made gangster rap a multimillion-selling commodity throughout the early- to mid-1990's, changed its name to Tha Row after the fortunes of the company had reversed, with many of the label's biggest acts, including Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, defecting.
One of the factors that made gangster pictures so subversive was that, in the difficult economic times of the Depression, there already existed the viewpoint that the only way to get financial success was through crime.
In the same way that The Godfather made gangsters the perfect image of American capitalism in the 1970s, Hughes made teenagers the complete metaphor for the consumerist society, and one that's very much still with us.
When François Truffaut discussed his film "Shoot the Piano Player" soon after its release, he spoke of it in terms of "B movies" and "gangster films"; when Jean-Luc Godard talked about "Breathless," he said that he wanted to make a "gangster film" and also referred to "films policiers".
Meanwhile Mr. Crowe is to reunite in July with Ridley Scott, his director on "Gladiator," to make "American Gangster" in New York.
Papua New Guinea's street gangs, the Raskols, make the gangster claims of US rappers look ridiculous.
