Early Pre-Code Dramas
The Gangster Cycle and the Fallen
Woman Cycle

1930-1933
• Three common types of films:
– Gangster Cycle
– Fallen Woman Cycle
– Prison Cycle (we won’t be watching these)
• Response to social conditions of the early
years of the Depression.
• Threats to usual social codes and economic
stability led to films that questioned both.

Gangster Films
• American dream in its negative form
• Ambitious hero hungers for success but is
thwarted by economic conditions
• He starts at the bottom and works his way up.
• Traditional sources of justice (police, courts)
are corrupt or inept.
• Gangster’s downfall results from rivals or
personal flaw, not the operations of the law.

Gangster Films, continued
• Frequently embody the immigrant’s narrative
toward success in America
– Hard work and thrift versus a flashy, excessive way of
life
– Old world parent (often a mother) with traditional
values in conflict with American (modern) values
– Respect for authority is conflicted
– Purity of women and the sanctity of the home is
threatened
– Often a set of paired characters: friends, siblings
– Traditional values of education and literacy are
questioned

Gangster Films, continued
• Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic
Hero”: “The gangster is doomed because he is
under the obligation to succeed. . . . Every
attempt to succeed is an act of aggression. . . .
The effect of the gangster film is to embody
this dilemma in the person of the gangster
and resolve it by his death.

The Fallen Woman Film
• Heroine “falls” from the purest of motives, often to
save a family member or for true love.
• She often bears a child and struggles to legitimize it or
provide a home, despite enormous sacrifices.
• Economic crisis may force her to prostitute herself.
• In the “mistress” films, the woman sacrifices her own
happiness so as not to break up her lover’s marriage.
• Unlike the gangster films, the fallen women films have
the woman suffering throughout (rather than a tacked-
on “crime does not pay” ending).

Fallen Woman Films, continued
• Threat to the social order posed by women
alone dictates that conventional morality must
be upheld.
• The women are frequently miserable even when living
in luxury.
• Often the loss of a child, a family member, or the man
whom she truly loves punishes her in the end.
• Heroine overcomes poverty with a sin (prostitution) but
then rejects the sin and begs forgiveness.

Examples and Exceptions
• Blonde Venus
• The Easiest Way (1931)
• The “working girl” variation: She Had to Say
Yes
• Exceptions: the “golddigger” film