The Public Enemy 1931

The Public Enemy

1931 · United States · Directed by William A. Wellman · 83 min

TenseBleak Great first watch · Easy Drama

A Chicago street boy turns Prohibition crime into a career whose speed leaves loyalty and family behind.

Edited by Monocurator

The Public Enemy: Tom, the grapefruit and the ending

Tom Powers grows up alongside Matt Doyle, but his brother is Mike Powers. Matt joins him in crime; Mike challenges the life he has chosen. Those two relationships pull Tom toward different versions of belonging.

Tom PowersJames Cagney
The boy who becomes a bootlegger
Matt DoyleEdward Woods
Tom’s childhood friend and partner in crime
Mike PowersDonald Cook
Tom’s older brother, who rejects his criminal life

AFI’s cast and story record

Who is in the grapefruit scene?

Cagney’s Tom pushes half a grapefruit into the face of his girlfriend Kitty, played by Mae Clarke. Jean Harlow plays Gwen Allen, the woman Tom takes up with afterwards. The Library of Congress identifies Clarke in the scene; AFI distinguishes the two roles.

The smallness of the gesture matters. An ordinary breakfast becomes a display of power, with no change of room or elaborate preparation. Watch how quickly Tom makes his impatience somebody else’s humiliation. The same energy that makes Cagney command the screen becomes difficult to enjoy when it lands on the person sitting across from him.

What happens to Tom at the end? Ending spoilers

Tom survives the gunfight in which he takes revenge for Matt’s death. His rivals then abduct him from the hospital. The body delivered to his mother’s door is Tom’s: the apparent journey home has become the gang’s final act against him. AFI’s synopsis separates the hospital survival from the later abduction and killing.

That sequence changes the force of the last image. We have followed Tom through a world where he tries to dictate every encounter. At home, the consequences arrive for people whose lives he could never keep separate from his own. The gangster story ends on a family’s doorstep, making the cost of his rise impossible to leave in the street.

What to expect

William A. Wellman’s hard, economical staging and James Cagney’s volatile performance helped define the American gangster film. Its violence arrives in gestures and consequences as much as gunfire, giving the rise-and-fall structure a disturbing everyday energy.

How to ease in

The opening childhood section establishes habits that the adult story accelerates. The named MoMA 35mm presentation runs 83 minutes; shorter historical lengths exist and are not treated as the same Version.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes organised crime, gun violence, murder, domestic abuse, misogyny, alcohol, a racial slur, and an abrupt image of a corpse.
Momo's Note May contain spoilers Who is Momo? →

A Chicago street boy turns Prohibition crime into a career whose speed leaves loyalty and family behind.

At first I feel the charge of Tom entering every room as if it belongs to him. Then the same impatience makes each person disposable.

Open the note ↓

At first I feel the charge of Tom entering every room as if it belongs to him. Then the same impatience makes each person disposable. The final return home turns that swagger into an absence I cannot laugh away.

— Momo

Momo with notes about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

MoMA 35mm presentation83 min83 minutes is attached only to this named presentation. No edition, score, territory, cut, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred. AFI records 74- and 83-minute lengths; 83 minutes applies only to the named MoMA 35mm presentation.Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-20

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