In September 1997, writer, wit, raconteur and gay icon Quentin Crisp named his ten favorite gangster movies for Neon film magazine. The list was featured under the magazine’s “It’s not what you think” page—a monthly selection of favorite things.

Crisp loved movies and described cinema as a “forgetting chamber”—a place to escape everyday woes. Movies were “better than real life” and “something you couldn’t have invented for yourself if you’d sat up all night.”

Crisp preferred American movies—they were were “exaggerations” pitched as “high as it can go”:

...because it’s either the most terrible time in somebody’s life or the most wonderful time in somebody’s life.

British movies were too much like real life and real life was boring. Crisp liked stars like Valentino, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Marlon Brando, Carmen Miranda, Kevin Spacey and Matthew McConaughey—who he thought “could play any number of Gary Cooper parts.”

Mr. Crisp loved gangster movies—the more violent the better—and he enjoyed a good bloody death—as “other people’s deaths affirm our existence.” His top ten list was based on an interview—the overuse of “and,” “that,” and “wonderful” suggest this, as does his running together of sentences—however, it is a fine list—a mix of old Hollywood classics with some contemporary independent films. But be warned this does contain spoilers. Mr. Crisp also discusses his own death—correctly predicting he would die “quietly” when he collapsed and died of a heart attack in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, on the eve of a sell-out British tour.
 

 

1. THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola, 1971)

My favourite because of Mr. Brando. He never makes like a gangster. From the beginning, when he stands in that darkened room and says [adopts Corleone accent], “you ask me favours but you do not call me Godfather,” he is a man trying to do his best for his family, many of whom he dislikes.

Brando should have played more gangsters because he has a built-in threat which is difficult to cultivate. It’s important that the main gangster dies, as Brando does, preferably violently. I do like death—especially other people’s.

2. LITTLE CAESAR (Mervyn LeRoy, 1930)

Mr [Edward G.] Robinson was the only actor who could play both the evil tyrant and the helpless victim. He was a great gangster in Little Caesar, although unfortunately I can’t remember the story. I love gangster movies because you can be afraid. The only emotion you can really feel is fear: you win an award and you roll your eyes and clap your hands, but really you’re only worried about what to wear at the reception. But when you’re afraid, you know you’re afraid. Films about ‘whether I love you more than you love me’ are a waste of time.

3. THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, 1953)

After Metropolis, Mr Lang went to America and made The Big Heat. At one point, I remember Mr [Lee] Marvin looks around the room for something with which to draw Miss [Gloria] Graham’s attention. He sees a cauldron of boiling coffee and—when I saw it, as his hand stretched out, the woman behind me said, “nooo!” Anyway, he takes the coffee and flings it at her. Later on, she throws coffee at Mr Marvin and she says, “You’ll end up like this”—and she tears off her bandages and her face is a mass of blisters. Wonderful.

4. DONNIE BRASCO (Mike Newell, 1997)

I have never believed in Johnny Depp because he appeared in such frivolous escapades as Edward Scissorhands, but he’s very good in this. As a Fed disguised as a Mafiosa, he has to show how us how afraid he is but conceal his fear from the other cast members. The last scene is wonderfully written, because after all the horror—after blood has splashed onto the camera lens—Mr [Al] Pacino takes the valuables out of his pocket and puts them in a drawer and opens it so that his wife will see it, and then he goes out and you hear the shots. It ends very quietly.

5. GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Goodfellas was nice because it gave you a glimpse of what gangsters’ wives did. Gangsters in other films only had molls, and they were very dreary. But the wives lived and enclosed life: they could never know anyone except the wives of other gangsters because no-one would want to know a gangster’s wife. It’s like being married to a policeman—no-one’s ever going to speak to you. So you saw the wives preparing endless fattening meals of spaghetti for these men, in an atmosphere of bonhomie and terror. And that was very good.

6. RESERVOIR DOGS (Quentin Tarantino, 1991)

A wonderful film because the plot is so clear. We have a heist, to steal some diamonds, which we never see—only a man running with a briefcase. I loved the tension, the grimness. I couldn’t believe we’d see them cutting off that policeman’s ear but we do, and the man walks around with his ear in his hand. Wonderful.

Other people’s deaths affirm our existence but people in films die in such quantities that it impedes its purpose. If they blow-up the White House, that doesn’t impress you unless you can see Mr Clinton’s head flying through the air.

7. THE USUAL SUSPECTS (Bryan Singer, 1995)

A wonderful film, though not strictly a gangster film, though it did connect a gang of people. OK, petty gangsters. Mr [Kevin] Spacey is the best thing about this film. In The Usual Suspects, they blow-up a ship, you catch the man and you interrogate him and you get rid of all the people, one by one, who it couldn’t be, and then you see Mr Spacey go out the front door of the police station and you see him abandon his limp and walk perfectly off. For me, the police have to be involved in a great gangster film: you need to see them against each other.

8. SCARFACE (Howard Hawks, 1932)

Mr [Paul] Muni made a point of taking any old part, but he wanted to play baddies as well, so he starred in I Am A Fugitive in A Chain Gang and Scarface. In it he shoots dead Mr [George] Raft, who, it was said, was a gangster in real life, who had deflowered his sister, who was Anne Dvorak, who never became anything because she wasn’t beautiful. But in fact he had married Anne Dvorak—and that was the great tragedy. It was a sentimental gangster movie. You were meant to weep, and for Mr Raft, which takes some doing.

9. TRIAL BY JURY (Heywood Gould, 1994)

This has all the right ingredients. A woman decides to serve for a jury, and in a typical Mafioso ploy, they get her by threatening her little son, whom she places with his father, which they find out, so she knows she must find the man innocent, which places her against the jury, and they threaten too. I loved the sustained threat from the word go. It was a rather weak, cleared-up ending, when she puts on a slinky evening dress and goes out with a knife in her handbag and all that, but it was a wonderful film.

10. MILLER’S CROSSING (Joel Coen, 1990)

A chilling, bleak film, with a real plot. Mr [Gabriel] Byrne makes a man kneel down in the forest, and the man prays for his life. Later the guy says, “Look into your heart—you’ll see that you don’t have to do this.” Mr Byrne says, “What heart?” and shoots him dead. Lovely.

My own death? After having pitched my life so high, I’m afraid I will die quietly. I’d like to die publicly. I don’t want to die and have people say, “Isn’t he dead? I thought he was dead.” So I thought I could be shot by a policeman. “ROGUE COP SHOOTS CRISP” could be the headline.

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Francis Ford Coppola’s original cast list for ‘The Godfather’
 
H/T Flashbak, Crisperanto.