Little Caesar: End of Rico, Beginning of the Antihero (2005 Video) User Reviews

Nice Documentary on the 1931 Classic

[Michael_Elliott · 23 March 2011]

Little Caesar: End of Rico, Beginning of the Antihero (2005)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another wonderful documentary from Warner, which was released in 2005 on their DVD release of LITTLE CAESAR. Martin Scorsese, Drew Casper and Alain Silver are just a few of the famous faces who appear and give their opinions on the making of the film as well as its place in history. The documentary does a good job showing what the 1920s were like as various gangster figures were making tons of money through alcohol sales and then what happened after the stock market crashed. In regards to the film there is some discussion on how Edward G. Robinson got the role, what part Clark Gable almost had as well as issues with the censor board. There's also some talk about how the Rico character was based on Al Capone. If you're a fan of this classic 1931 film then you're going to love hearing these stories. The documentary runs just under 17-minutes so there's not a lot of time nor any great detail but I think there's enough here where fans will walk away happy. We get countless clips from the movie as well as the experts discussing an alternate ending and the current ending, which contains some very famous lines. Clips from this film as well as THE ROARING TWENTIES are featured and if you haven't seen either film it's best you see them before watching this as there are plenty of spoilers.

Clark Gable's ears were "too big" . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 6 December 2014]

. . . to play Al Capone, producer Darryl F. Zanuck asserted. So Rhett-to-be missed out on a chance to portray LITTLE CAESAR (a.k.a., Capone Lite), but Zanuck would follow him to MGM studios and enlist Clark in a different "Lost Cause" nine years later, the talking heads on this documentary short recount. Meanwhile, a "well-read immigrant" named Edward G. Robinson would inherit the lead in Zanuck's 1930 production of GONE WITH THE BOOZE, only to ask at the end, "Mother of Mercy, can this be the end of Rico?" THE BEGINNING OF THE ANTIHERO "experts" make out that somehow Warner Brothers was heroic here in putting out an immoral, "Pre-Code," against-the-romantic-comedy flow of all their rival film studios with their LITTLE CAESAR flick. I say that these so-called film historians, several of who make big bucks to spew semi-accurate trivia to college kids, need to have looked no further afield than the aforementioned "Post-Code" MGM effort GONE WITH THE WIND to see that that studio by far outstripped Warners in defying convention. To take just one of many possible examples, examine the scene in which that epitome of White Trash--Scarlett O'Hara--guns down a heroic Northern trooper who has just freed the slaves. She gets off Scot Free for her war crime! Why? Because, frankly, when it came to good morals, unlike Warners, MGM just didn't give a damn!