QUOTE(max power @ Mar 5, 2007 -> 02:13 AM)
The Public Enemy is one of my top 5 favorite movies. I just referenced scarface because most people have seen it. There was nothing gawdy about that 1931 movie, that's pretty ridiculous. Most of the time people were being killed in The Public Enemy it wasn't even directly filmed yet you still knew it happened, making the movie even more intense imo. It was stylized, yes, very.
I guess it depends on your definition of gawdy. City of god, scarface, Gangs of New York, those are movies that say gawdy violence to me. How about the end of the movie? The guy gets shot more times than tony montana.
overly stylized and gawdy was referring to scarface(depalma), but in the context of their time, the public enemy was glorifying the violence, everyone wanted to be like cagney. one guy going in a room full of top mobsters and killing all of them/only getting shot once, in the head, walking out onto the street for a 300 feet and saying "i ain't so tough" isn't that much more far fetched then the amt. of times shot in city of god.