G Men is a 1935 Warner Bros. film starring James Cagney and Ann Dvorak that is based on the mythologized origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. The film's significance is less in its cinematic merits than as a propaganda effort in the FBI's "war on crime" in the middle years of the depression. According to Variety Magazine, it was one of the top-grossing films of 1935.
G Men was made as part of a deliberate att...
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G Men is a 1935 Warner Bros. film starring James Cagney and Ann Dvorak that is based on the mythologized origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. The film's significance is less in its cinematic merits than as a propaganda effort in the FBI's "war on crime" in the middle years of the depression. According to Variety Magazine, it was one of the top-grossing films of 1935.
G Men was made as part of a deliberate attempt to counteract what many conservative political and business leaders claimed was a disturbing trend of glorifying criminals in the early 1930s gangster film genre. Although the gangster films were typically presented as moral indictments of organized crime where the criminal protagonist inevitably died, they nevertheless depicted a life of freedom, power and luxury enjoyed by gangsters in the midst of a real-life economic crisis. Foremost of these films were Little Caesar, the original Scarface, and perhaps the most memorable, The Public...
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