Robert Emmett O’Connor

[7] James Cagney makes his breakthrough performance as a Chicago street kid who becomes a successful gangster during prohibition. I don’t usually like gangster movies, but director William Wellman (Wings, The Ox-Bow Incident) frames The Public Enemy as a cautionary tale with a moral ending — it doesn’t glamorize the lifestyle like so many more modern movies do. And while I may not relate with …