In The Public Enemy (1931), James Cagney played Tom Powers, a young man who rises from petty crime to become a powerful bootlegger during Prohibition. Directed by William A. Wellman, the film was a landmark of the early gangster cycle, and Cagney’s performance gave it its lasting power.
Tom Powers is not a grand, operatic villain. He is quick, cocky and dangerous in a very human way, and Cagney played him with a speed and directness that audiences had not seen before. The famous grapefruit scene, in which Tom pushes a grapefruit into his girlfriend’s face, became notorious, but it is Cagney’s overall energy — his walk, his talk, his sudden anger — that defines the film.
The Public Enemy made Cagney a star and set the template for the screen gangster. It remains the film most closely associated with his early career, and a vivid record of a new kind of American screen acting.