2_The Public Enemy
(1931, dir. William Wellman)
Best Seen: Warner DVD
Time Code: Chapter 23, 81:23
Titular gangster Tom Powers is coming home from the hospital where he’d been treated after a gun battle. So says the call received at the Powers household, and that call sets the household buzzing. While the phonograph blares “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” there is a knock on the door, and suddenly there’s James Cagney’s corpse wrapped in a blanket, his eyes still open in horror, standing rigid in the doorway, as his killers placed him. He falls with an ungodly slam into the foyer, the phonograph still merrily crackling.