Gangster Nr. 1

"I Mobster" was directed and co-produced by Roger Corman. This means that the production was done very economically and it made money...and would probably be very entertaining!

Steve Cochran plays Joe Sante, a thug who's worked his way up from a kid running numbers to a leader of the mob. The film shows his life from start to finish and shows both the good (just a bit) and the bad (there's a whole lotta bad). The acting, direction and script are all very good...though nothing so outstanding that it will leave a long and lasting impression. Just a decent gangster film.

Roger Corman directed this 1958 story of the rise and fall of a hoodlum, on what was for him a generous budget. There's an exploitation feeling to this one, which was one of many inexpensive, somewhat backward looking crime films of the late fifties. Steve Cochran, in the title role, is a little too old but still holds the screen with his unique brand of sleazy charisma, showing once again that with the right vehicle he might have become a major star. His performance is sympathetic, and helps make the movie more interesting than it might have been with a cooler actor (Ralph Meeker, say). The script isn't much, and the other actors are no more than adequate. If one has a taste for lowbrow crime films, this one's pretty good, as it evokes its paperback and men's magazine era nicely, and has about it the whiff of an old-time barbershop.

I, MOBSTER may have some historical significance, of a sort. This may be the first film based on a paperback original. When I say "paperback original" I'm referring to the flood of two-bit (literally, they sold for a quarter) paperback books that were NOT reprints: these books, published by Dell, Gold Medal (Fawcett) Lion and others had a boom after World war II, taking over the newsstands, drug store racks, etc. and hastening the demise of the pulp magazines. Writers like Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jim Thompson and Charles Williams got their start in the paperback originals, and established writers like David Goodis and Cornell Woolrich turned to them for quick money.

Many of these books have now been filmed by the likes of Truffaut (SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER from Goodis' DOWN THERE) Cornfield (THE 3RD VOICE from Williams' ALL THE WAY) and others -- Jim Thompson most frequently --but as far as I can tell, Roger Corman's I, MOBSTER was the first, from an "anonymous" Gold Medal Original, I, MOBSTER, published in 1951.

Can anyone find an earlier?

This is the second Roger Corman gangster flick I have seen, the other being MACHINE GUN KELLY and I got what I expected. A well made, involving, well acted gangster picture. Here we get the life and times of Joe Sante (Steve Cochran in a real good performance) starting with being a youngster, his promotion from Black Frankie Udino (Robert Strauss), meeting and falling in love with Teresa Porter (Lita Milan) and his promise to himself that he would not go back to the slammer.

Personally, I can see similarities to the big boys on the block THE GODFATHER and GOODFELLAS. Just don't expect it to be that great. Supposedly this was Corman biggest film to date with a budget of $500,000, which for Corman was astronomical and distributed by 20th Century Fox.

I Mobster is directed by Roger Corman and adapted to screenplay by Steve Fisher from the novel written by Joseph Hilton Smyth. It stars Steve Cochran, Lita Milan, Robert Strauss, Celia Lovsky and John Brinkley. A CinemaScope production, music is by Gerald Fried and Edward L. Alperson Junior and cinematography by Floyd Crosby.

Roger Corman was late in coming to the film noir/crime splinter of film making, but in 1958 he manufactured two very accomplished gangster pictures. Machine Gun Kelly starring Charles Bronson was something of a success, so it was hardly surprising to see Corman serve up another helping of gangster cinema with I Mobster.

Pic charts the rise of Joe Sante (Cochran), from a boy running bets for a local hood, to being the leader of all illegal and violent operations in the city. There's nothing remotely new here as per the genre scheme of things, it is what it is, a straight forward tale of a bad man who finds himself getting deeper in the mire the higher up the hoodlum ladder he gets. On the side of this normal trajectory is how his climb affects those closest to him, notably the two ladies of his life, Ma Sante and Teresa Porter.

Come the resolution of the tale, Joe Sante is hit with the stark realisation of the life he has led. But is it too late for him? Along the way there's some sexy sizzle by way of a show put on by burlesque queen Lili St. Cyr, while Corman even inserts a sex metaphor that's so unsubtle that Hitchcock himself would doubtless have approved.

Corman re-teams from "Kelly" with Crosby and Fried, who once again provide crisp black and white images and furious jazz strains respectively. He is well served by his cast, Cochran is too old for the role as written, but he has a magnetic presence. Milan impacts strongly as the one time honest girl turned moll in the name of love, while Lovsky as Joe's weary mother is hugely effective in conveying a parent with a broken heart. Best of the bunch is Strauss as Black Frankie, he's a larger than life henchman and with the writers affording the character some telling passages in the play, Strauss responds in kind.

Recommended fare for genre fans after a quick fix of gangster shenanigans. 7/10