Underworld (1927 film)

Underworld is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg for Paramount Famous Lasky Corp., starring George Bancroft, Evelyn Brent, and Clive Brook, and written from a story by Ben Hecht. It premiered in New York City at the Paramount Theatre on 20 August 1927¹ and is widely cited as the film that launched the Hollywood gangster genre, setting the pattern later followed by Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932)². At the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, Hecht received the Academy Award for Best Original Story for the picture¹.

Production

The Ben Hecht original story was first announced in December 1926 as a starring vehicle for Ricardo Cortez, who did not remain with the project. George Bancroft and Evelyn Brent were hired in January 1927, with Arthur Rosson assigned to direct; at that time von Sternberg was serving as director of photographic effects. Von Sternberg was named the new director in an 8 March 1927 Film Daily item, and Rosson dropped out because he was committed to another film, Grounds for Marriage, which was never released¹. Principal photography ran from late April to early May 1927 at the Paramount Famous Lasky Studios in Hollywood¹; the San Francisco Silent Film Festival notes that he shot the film on a five-week schedule⁴.

Hecht, a former Chicago newspaperman, knew the gangland milieu firsthand and based picturesque details of the story on real criminals; the Revue Cinema program notes identify the model as "Terrible" Tommy O'Connor, a mafia henchman who escaped prison days before his execution and was never apprehended⁵. Hecht was aghast at what von Sternberg did to his story, since only a few elements of the original were preserved and the hard-boiled veneer gave way to a more romantic, operatic mood; he believed the film would flop and lobbied to have his name removed from the credits^{6 • 4}.

Reception and influence

The film was a massive and unexpected hit⁶. Contemporary reviews praised the gripping drama and the performances of the three leads; Variety called it "a whale of a film yarn"¹. Despite the studio's refusal to promote it, the Revue Cinema notes describe it as a box office phenomenon that ushered in round-the-clock screenings at New York's Paramount Theatre⁵.

Genre founding. Film criticism has long pinpointed Underworld as the first major gangster film, viewed within a line leading to Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface². The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction states that despite earlier antecedents, it is generally the commercial success of Underworld in 1927 that is seen as the start of representations of powerful gangsters⁷. The Museum of Modern Art's Film Notes observed that realistic treatment of violence and crime had been steadily banished from the screen, so that the film's relatively frank, uncompromising picture of gangland created a considerable impression, and that in 1927 it set a fashion for gangster pictures lasting into the first years of the talkies⁸.

Visual vocabulary. In a piece for Criterion's Current, Geoffrey O'Brien enumerates the imagery that, new at the time, entered the stock language of the gangster film: a bank window bursting apart, squad cars racing wildly along darkened city streets, the outlaw hero gazing at a neon sign announcing "The City Is Yours," a gangster killed by gunfire in his flower shop, and a killer trapped by police in an apartment whose windows shatter under gunfire as smoke floods the room⁶. Von Sternberg himself described the film in his autobiography as "an experiment in photographic violence and montage"⁶. Richard Brody of The New Yorker notes that Sternberg's approach has little to do with the specifics of organized crime; he presents a story of confidence and betrayal, in richly ornamental compositions dense with shadows and objects that separate viewers from the action⁹.

Career impact. After a series of frustrated projects, Underworld saved von Sternberg's Hollywood career and launched an eight-year association with Paramount, his most productive period, which produced The Last Command and The Docks of New York (both 1928) and later his films with Marlene Dietrich^{2 • 6}. The film made a star of George Bancroft².

Legacy and preservation

The film is extant. Prints exist as 35mm positives and 16mm reduction positives, and the film is in the public domain in the USA³. The Museum of Modern Art requested prints of Underworld from Paramount as early as 1935, among the first six silent features the museum sought from the studio¹⁰. The Criterion Collection released it on Blu-ray in the box set 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg¹¹, and it was screened at the Kansas Silent Film Festival on 29 February 2020¹.

References

1. Underworld (1927), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. Vicente Rodriguez-Ortega, "Underworld," Senses of Cinema, April 2005
3. Underworld (1927), Silent Era Progressive Silent Film List
4. Underworld, San Francisco Silent Film Festival
5. Silent Revue: Underworld (1927), Revue Cinema
6. Geoffrey O'Brien, "Underworld: Dreamland," The Criterion Collection, August 2010
7. The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction (chapter on crime film history)
8. Underworld (1927), Toronto Film Society film notes
9. Richard Brody, "Underworld," The New Yorker, September 2015
10. The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912–1929, Library of Congress
11. Underworld, The Criterion Collection

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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