"Here are 15 gangster pictures that had a profound effect on me and the way I thought about crime and how to portray it on film. They excited me, provoked me, and in one way or another, they had the ring of truth.
I stopped before the ‘70s because we’re talking about influence here, and I was looking at movies in a different way after I started making my own pictures. There are many gangster films I’ve admired in the last 40 years—Performance, the Godfather saga, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, The Long Good Friday, Sexy Beast, John Woo’s Hong Kong films.
The films below I saw when I was young, open, impressionable."
- The Public Enemy (1931)
- Scarface (1932)
- Blood Money (1933)
- The Roaring Twenties (1939)
- Force of Evil (1948)
- White Heat (1949)
- Night and the City (1950)
- Touchez pas au Grisbi (1954)
- The Phenix City Story (1955)
- Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955)
- Murder by Contract (1958)
- Al Capone (1959)
- Le Doulos (1962)
- Mafioso (1962)
- Point Blank (1967)
