Humphrey Bogart Movie:

		List Price: $68.98		Label: Warner Home Video Salesrank: 9894 Released: March 25, 2008
		Our Price: $49.47
		Used Price: $52.33
		MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
The Public Enemy showcases James Cagney's powerful 1931 breakthrough performance as streetwise tough guy Tom Powers. When shooting began, Cagney had a secondary role but Zanuck soon spotted Cagney's screen dominance and gave him the star part. From that moment, an indelible genre classic and an enduring star career were both born.

As a psychotic thug devoted to his hard-boiled ma, James Cagney - older, scarier and just as elctrifying - gives a performance to match his work in The Public Enemy as White Heat's cold-blooded Cody Jarrett. Bracingly directed by Raoul Walsh, this fast-paced thriller tracing Jarrett's violent life in and out of jail is also a harrowing character study. Jarrett is a psychological time bomb ruled by impulse. It is among the most vivid screen performances of Cagney's career, and the excitement it generates will put you on top of the world!

In Angels with Dirty Faces, Cagney's Rocky Sullivan is a charismatic ghetto tough whose underworld rise makes him a hero to a gang of slum punks. The 1938 New York Film Critics Best Actor Award came Cagney's way, as well as one of the film's three Oscar nominations. Watch the chilling death-row finale and you'll know why.

"R-I-C-O, Little Caesar, that's who!" Edward G. Robinson bellowed into the phone. And Hollywood got the message: 37-year-old Robinson, not gifted with matinee-idol looks, was nonetheless a first-class star and moviegoers hailed the hard-hitting social consciousness dramas that became the Depression-era mainstay of Warner Bros.

Little Caesar is the tale of pugnacious Caesar Enrico Bandello, a hoodlum with a Chicago-sized chip on his shoulder, few attachments, fewer friends and no sense of underworld diplomacy. And Robinson - a genteel art collector who disdained guns (in the movie, his eyelids were taped to keep them from blinking when he fired a pistol) - was forever associated with the screen's archetypal gangster.

A rundown diner bakes in the Arizona heat. Inside, fugitive killer Duke Mantee sweats out a manhunt, holding disillusioned writer Alan Squier, young Gabby Maple and a handful of others hostage.

The Petrified Forest, Robert E. Sherwood's 1935 Broadway success about survival of the fittest, hit the screen a year later with Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart magnificently recreating their stage roles and Bette Davis ably reteaming with her Of Human Bondage co-star Howard. Sherwood first wanted Bogart for a smaller role. "I thought Sherwood was right," Bogart said. "I couldn't picture myself playing a gangster. So what happened? I made a hit as the gangster." So right was he that Howard refused to make the film without him...and helped launch Bogie's brilliant movie career.

In The Roaring Twenties, the speakeasy era never roared louder than in this gangland chronicle that packs a wallop under action master Raoul Walsh's direction. Against a backdrop of newsreel-like montages and narration, it follows the life of jobless war veteran Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) who turns bootlegger, dealing in "bottles instead of battles." Battles await Eddie within and without his growing empire. Outside are territorial feuds and gangland bloodlettings. Inside is the treachery of his double-dealing associate (Humphrey Bogart). It would be 10 years before Cagney played another gangster (in White Heat), a time in which gangster movies themselves became rare. "He used to be a big shot," Panama Smith (Gladys George) says at the finale, marking Bartlett's demise...and signaling the end of Hollywood's focus on the gangster era.

Description of Warner Gangsters Collection, Vol. 1 (The Public Enemy / White Heat / Angels with Dirty Faces / Little Caesar / The Petrified Forest / The Roaring Twenties):
For a knock-out combination of timeless entertainment and vintage studio history, you can't do much better than The Warner Brothers Gangsters Collection. In the 1930s and '40s, Paramount specialized in glossy comedies, MGM popularized lavish musicals, Universal produced signature horror classics, and Fox scored hits with sophisticated dramas. But it was Warner Bros. that generated controversy--if not always box-office profits--with so-called "social problem" films, and that meant gangsters. When viewed in their pre- and post-Prohibition context and in chronological order (Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, 1931; The Petrified Forest, 1936; Angels With Dirty Faces, 1938; The Roaring Twenties, 1939; White Heat, 1949), these six films definitively capture Warners' domination of the mobster genre, and to varying degrees, they all qualify as classics.

With its stilted visuals and pulpy plot, Little Caesar remains stuck in the stiff, early-sound era, but it's still a prototypical powerhouse, with Edward G. Robinson's titular "Rico" setting the stage for all screen gangsters to follow. The Public Enemy made James Cagney a star (who can forget him smashing a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face?), and Humphrey Bogart repeats his Broadway success in The Petrified Forest, a stagy adaptation of Robert Sherwood's play, still enjoyable for Bogey's ever-threatening malevolence. Then it's a Cagney triple-threat in Angels (with Pat O'Brien), racketeering in The Roaring Twenties (with Bogart), and especially the jailbird classic White Heat, with a fiery finale and an exit line ("Made it Ma! Top o' the world!") that epitomized Cagney's iconic, tough-guy image. In many ways Cagney was Warner Bros., and this Gangsters Collection pays enduring tribute to him and the important films that forged the studio's rugged reputation. --Jeff Shannon

Warner Gangsters Collection, Vol. 1 (The Public Enemy / White Heat / Angels with Dirty Faces / Little Caesar / The Petrified Forest / The Roaring Twenties) Reviews:
What a Collection!
2009-12-31 - A very enjoyable collection of movies and some of the greatest Hollywood ever made. Little Caesar is a early talkie classic, The Public Enemy packs a wow! finish, The Petrified Forest is a great little play made into an interesting movie, The Roaring Twenties is big budget glitz, Angels with Dirty Faces plays a different tune and White Heat is amazing! How enjoyable can a film collection be?

Asteal of a deal
2009-08-31 - This is the collection i have been looking forward to. It contians the classic elements of good and evil clearly envisioned by the writers,directors and actors. They are career starters for Cagney, Robinson and Bogart. It is easy to see why they went on to great careers. A must for all to have in a DVD collection

a must own dvd set
2009-08-15 - I got it and i love it and for the pirce you cant beat it go get it before they go away again and you have to buy them single
great packaging and all in great condition

Fun collection
2009-08-14 - If you like some of the old movies you will like this collection. Very entertaining without a lot of explicit blood and guts and irrelevent sex in the new movies. Brings you back in time.

One of the Most Well Rounded Films Sets Out There
2009-08-07 - Let me start off by saying that when I purchased this item it was on sale, at a price around 30 dollars.

The set contains all six DVDs in their own case. The cases are regular size, not the miniature ones that sets sometimes come in.

Most collections like this usually contain one or two filler films, that are not all that good but complete the set. This one does not. There is not a bad film in the bunch, which makes the collection. Possibly the worst film in the collection is The Petrified Forrest, however because it was the role that helped make Humphrey Bogart it is a treasure for his fans.

James Cagney is in four of these films (all but Cesar and Forrest) and I had never seen him in any before these. He is really good. Bogart is is three of the films, although in a small supporting role (Angels, Forrest, Twenties). Finally these 6 films are arguably 6 of the 7 best gangster films of the era. (If you purchase the original Scarface Scarface (Universal Cinema Classics) you will have the best of the 30's gangster film). Those are the three most compelling reasons to purchase this set, Cagney, Bogie and the fact they are all highly regarded classics.

Once again for the price of 30 dollars you get 6 films. At that price with the quality of the films you can't pass it up.