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| Lewis Milestone: The Racket (US 1928). Gentlemen of the press eager to expose the racket: Pratt (Lee Moran), and Miller (Skeets Gallagher) meet Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan). |
US © 1928 The Caddo Company. Prod.: Howard Hughes per The Caddo Company.
Director: Lewis Milestone. Sog.: from the pièce of the same name (1927) by Bartlett Cormack. Scen.: Bartlett Cormack, Tom Miranda. F.: Tony Gaudio – b&w. M.: Eddie Adams. Scgf.: Julian Fleming. Int.: Thomas Meighan (captain McQuigg), Louis Wolheim (Nick Scarsi), Marie Prevost (Helen Hayes), G. Pat Collins (agent Johnson), Henry Sedley (Spike Corcoran), George Stone (Joe Scarsi), Sam DeGrasse (district attorney Welch), Skeets Gallagher (reporter Miller), Lee Moran (reporter Pratt).
84 min
Not released in Finland.
Restored in 2016 by Academy Film Archive, from elements provided by The Howard Hughes Corporation and by University of Nevada College of Fine Arts’ Department of Film.
DCP from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
By courtesy of Flicker Alley.
Silent. Digital piano: Neil Brand
Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Lewis Milestone: of Wars and Men.
Introduced by Jeffrey Masino (Flicker Alley).
Viewed with e-subtitles in Italian by SubTi Londra at Cinema Jolly, 23 June 2025.
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025): "This “most important gangster picture of the silent era” (Kevin Brownlow) and a precursor to the gangster cycle of the 1930s, The Racket, masterfully shot by Italian-American cinematographer Tony Gaudio, establishes one of the most precise visual styles imaginable for crime film."
"The eventful and busy plot involves Captain McQuigg, a tough cop and an early, roaring twenties incarnation of Dirty Harry, trying to bring peace to an unnamed but clearly Chicago-inspired city that has become a stage for violent gang wars. Despite obstacles posed by corrupt city officials, McQuigg makes it his mission to go after the bootlegger baron, Nick Scarsi."
"The film was adapted from a play by Bart Cormack, one of the first underworld stories to emerge from Chicago. The actor Thomas Meighan saw a performance of it in Los Angeles (starring Edward G. Robinson!) and pitched it to Milestone, who liked the idea and, in return, gave Meighan the leading role."
"Kevin Brownlow writes that the film’s significance was not due to it being unusually well-directed, but because “at long last a film dealt head-on with the link between gangsters, police, and politicians – a link, incidentally, which was so thoroughly American it went back to Colonial times.” Modelled on William Hale Thompson, a corrupt Chicago mayor who received a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds from Al Capone, the character of Nick Scarsi – played by Louis Wolheim – also channels Capone himself. Wolheim, who looks as though he has come straight from the skids, was, in fact, a mathematics teacher whose passion for sports gave him his signature broken nose."
"Foreseeably, the film was banned in Chicago but was extremely well-received elsewhere and consolidated the reputation of its producer, Howard Hughes, who, in 1951, ordered a remake directed by John Cromwell. However, Milestone’s original version, with its gritty, uncompromising vision of corruption and crime, remains untouchable." Ehsan Khoshbakht (Bologna 2025)
IMDb capsule: "An honest police captain vows to bring down a powerful bootlegger who is protected by corrupt politicians and judges."
AA: The restoration of Lewis Milestone's The Racket, a labour of love by Jeffrey Masino / Flicker Alley, is a major event. The movie was long highlighted by Carlos Clarens (Crime Movies) and Kevin Brownlow (Beyond the Mask of Innocence), but neither had seen it. A previous Flicker Alley restoration was screened in Bologna in 2005, but only as a video projection which I preferred to pass. Good things are worth waiting for.
D. W. Griffith in The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) had launched the gangster film, and following the success of Underworld (1927) it became a major genre. The play and the movie Chicago (1927), although not telling a gangster story, contributed to the perception of Chicago as the capital of crime.
Milestone had a way in turning popular plays into compelling movies, and of this talent The Racket is an early specimen. The cinematographer was maestro Tony Gaudio whose next assignment was She Goes to War and who went on to shoot Little Caesar. Views of streets glistening in the rain at night grew into key film noir imagery, with metaphysical gravity added.
The Racket is a well-made thriller and action film (gangland war with showdowns, gunfights, roadblocks, etc.) and more. Corruption is ubiquitous and oppressive on an ominously new level. Gangsters have taken over the city.
The theme of corruption had been inherent in the crime film since the beginning. Already in The Musketeers of Pig Alley we can observe a policeman on the take. The prostitution drama Traffic in Souls (US 1913) exposed white slavery behind a respectable facade (resembling The Godfather's wedding party). Pre-Code film-makers like Rowland Brown (Quick Millions, Blood Money) pursued the theme which then returned only in film noir (All the King's Men, Force of Evil). The Racket itself was remade with Robert Mitchum in the role of the untouchable captain, but the closest point of comparison to Milestone's movie is The Big Heat.
It was daring to call the gangster boss "Scarsi" because everyone understood the reference to Al "Scarface" Capone. It was also playing with fire to introduce the character of the Mayor called "the Old Man" (never seen but in charge of all), because he was understood to be Chicago's corrupt mayor Big Bill Thompson. Milestone pursued such authenticity that he employed as advisors a team of eight genuine Chicago racketeers, including bootleggers, a safecracker, a drug peddler and a forger. The result was deemed so realistic by the underworld that people involved in the movie received death threats.
The granite-faced Thomas Meighan had risen to stardom in The Miracle Man, and Milestone guided him to new heights in The Racket. Meigham had debuted in the gangster genre the year before in The City Gone Wild co-starring with Louise Brooks (the last print of the movie was destroyed by Paramount in 1971). The character of Captain McQuigg now appears as a blueprint for Eliot Ness (incarnated on tv and in the cinema by Robert Stack and Kevin Costner).
Louis Wolhelm with his anti-glamorous looks belongs to the screen's beloved monsters in a way similar to Harry Baur, Michel Simon, Charles Laughton – and Edward G. Robinson, who created the role of Nick Scarsi on Broadway with such force that it relaunched his Hollywood career. But Wolheim is equally fascinating. "The better the villain, the better the movie" was a credo of Alfred Hitchcock, and Milestone understood it, too. Wolheim entered Milestone's world already in Two Arabian Knights and achieved immortality in All Quiet on the Western Front. Here he creates a truly scary gangster boss for the first time in the cinema. Probably Robinson had achieved that already in his stage incarnation.
"Women are poison to me", declares Nick Scarsi and insults the singer Helen Hayes (Marie Prevost) so that she, drawing on female intuition and aware of Nick's weakest spot, launches a chain of events that finally leads to the gangster boss's demise. Prevost had been a lovely model for Edwin Bower Hesser and Alfred Cheney Johnston and then a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty until she burned her bathing suit on Coney Island and upgraded to feature films (such as A Small Town Idol). Her golden moment came with Ernst Lubitsch who adored her and launched a new period for both in three movies.
It's a great cast and an impressive gallery of faces in crowd scenes. Milestone is the kind of director who never projects a faceless crowd. Everyone seems to have a story to tell.
In The Racket a disturbing topic was introduced into the American cinema arguably for the first time: the rogue cop. In a sinister turning-point, McQuigg the lawman, seeing both the Mayor and the District Attorney corrupted by the mob, takes justice into his own hands, deliberately breaking the law (including habeas corpus). Fighting the Devil with a demon.
The rogue cop became a major subject in film noir, in movies like Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950), The Prowler (Joseph Losey, 1951), Detective Story (William Wyler, 1951), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952) and Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). William P. McGivern was a specialist of the trend, covering corruption in big cities in novels that were filmed as The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953), Shield for Murder (Howard W. Koch, Edmond O'Brien, 1953), Rogue Cop (Roy Rowland, 1954) and Hell on Frisco Bay (Frank Tuttle, 1955).
Milestone filmed the last American film of another "fascinating monster" (to speak with Mae West), Emil Jannings: Betrayal (missing believed lost according to the National Film Preservation Board, 2021). After All Quiet on the Western Front, he directed the first film adaptation of The Front Page, returning to Chicago's world of crime and journalists who are wise about corruption.
Based on the novel by Richard Dougherty and a screenplay by Henri Simoun and Abraham Polonsky, Donald Siegel directed a rogue cop masterpiece, Madigan (an American counterpart to Kurosawa's Stray Dog, starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura), and then the now best-remembered rogue cop film, Dirty Harry, which spawned not only four sequels but an entire subgenre, complete with a parody (Sledge Hammer! "Shoot first, ask questions never").
All this launched by Milestone.
...
AFI CATALOG ONLINE SYNOPSIS
During Prohibition, the job of metropolitan policeman Capt. James “Mac” McQuigg is to keep the peace, even while rival mobs fight for territory, and politicians make alliances with organized crime in exchange for election support.
During a street gunfight, Mac encounters one of the major mob bosses, bootlegger Nick Scarsi, with whom he is on superficially cordial terms. Watching bullets fly, Nick suggests that Mac should change his “racket,” but Mac replies that he likes what he is doing.
Later, Nick has his men deliver liquor to the territory of his rival, Spike Corcoran, prompting another shootout, but the alert Mac has police there and arrests Chick, one of Nick’s henchmen.
Soon after, Mac is forced to free Chick, because “The Old Man,” the city’s most influential and corrupt politician, arranges for all charges to be dropped.
The unmarried Nick considers women “poison” but dotes on his younger brother, Joe. For his birthday, Nick gives Joe an expensive ring and a party at a local speakeasy. During the party, Joe becomes enamored of street-smart singer Helen Hayes, and when Nick calls her a “gold digger,” the insult prompts her to encourage the younger man’s interest.
Although Nick has invited Mac to the party, other uninvited guests, Spike and his associates, also arrive. Foreseeing trouble, Mac summons his men to the site in time to arrest Nick after he kills Spike in a brief exchange of gunshots. The police are unable, however, to find the gun Nick used, as he passed it to a cohort immediately after the killing, and by the time Nick is taken to the station, Nick’s lawyer, Sam Meyer, is waiting with a signed writ of habeas corpus to effect his release.
Angered by the miscarriage of justice, Mac vows to drive Nick out of the area, but instead Nick uses his influence to get Mac transferred to the 28th precinct, known as “the sticks.” Two reporters, Pratt and Miller, are sent to cover Mac's demotion and wait in the lobby for the story. When Dave Ames, a young cub reporter from a small town press, arrives and naïvely expects to interview Mac, the captain takes pity when he sees the seasoned reporters mock Dave and allows him to interview imprisoned prostitutes.
Mac then uses Pratt and Miller to relay a challenge to Nick. As prompted by Mac, the reporters track Nick to Spike's funeral and circulate rumors that Nick is afraid of the captain. Denying it, Nick claims that he is waiting to cause trouble until after the upcoming Tuesday election. The newsmen later warn Mac that if he is unable to stop Nick before the election, which the Organization will likely win, the mobster will remain in power.
Meanwhile, Helen and Joe are driving in the area when a quarrel between them escalates, prompting Helen to leave the car and flag down a passing car. When the occupant, Johnson, who is a police patrolman, begins to harass Joe, he drives off recklessly and inadvertently kills an innocent pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident. Johnson arrests Joe and, unaware of his identity, beats him, hoping for a confession.
Helen is brought to the station as a witness, but refuses to cooperate and is placed in the women’s prison. She confides to Dave, who is immediately attracted to her, her concern that Nick will avenge Joe’s treatment. Soon after, District Attorney Welch, who is under the control of the mob, visits Mac, warning him to release Joe before Nick brings pressure to have him thrown off the force.
Mac taunts Helen for protecting Joe until she agrees to testify against him, then releases her. Although Mac tries to protect Johnson, who can testify to Joe’s killing of the pedestrian, Nick enters the station and shoots Johnson at close range. Although Nick flees, Johnson’s murder is witnessed by Dave, and Nick is soon apprehended.
When Meyer arrives with a writ of habeas corpus to free Nick, Mac rips it up, then locks up the attorney. Meanwhile, Helen’s hardened heart is softening toward Dave, whom she fears will be killed before he can testify, and she tricks Nick into confessing to the killing while the police are listening.
Mac suggests to Welch that the Organization cannot win the election if it protects Nick, given the solid evidence against him, then allows him use of one of the station rooms to meet with his client. Before Nick is brought to the room, Welch has a phone conversation with The Old Man, then he and his assistant, Sergeant Turck, set up a trap in the room.
When Nick is brought in, Welch tells him that The Old Man will not jeopardize the election on his behalf, causing Nick to threaten to go to the press with all that he knows about the Organization. In response, Welch says they have arranged an escape for him and refers him to a gun and an open window.
However, as Nick starts to flee through the window, Mac enters the room. Nick attempts to shoot him with the gun, but discovers the gun unloaded just as Turck shoots and kills him. Although Mac tells the reporters that Nick was shot while attempting to escape, they shrewdly wonder why the police did not simply capture the mobster.
Surmising the answer, Pratt becomes philosophical and says, “So that government of the professionals, by the professionals and for the professionals shall not perish from the earth.” Content that the news is a “break” for the paper’s Sunday edition, they leave.
Although Dave invites Helen to stay with him, she realizes the match is unsuitable, and they part after shaking hands. Admiring the exhausted Mac, who barely registers her presence, Helen tells him they have a lot in common, for neither of them can change, and then she, too, departs.
When a policeman asks Mac what next must be done, the captain admits he would like some sleep, but says he must deal with the coroner and other public servants, then it will be time for Mass.
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