Brian Ruiz Extra Credit Film #2
The film I picked to watch is “public enemies” where the notorious John Dillinger broke out of his jail and was on a bank-robbing spree with his fellow companions. The movie also follows his love life before he was shot and killed by the police. He was seeing a girl by the name of Billie Frechette and was instantly in love with her from the moment he first saw her. John Dillinger is seen more as a hero in this movie rather than a criminal showing how he would rather take the money of the bank instead of the citizens in the bank. He also cares about public image stating that he needed the public to like him because that is how he hides. In the end he was close to the “big score” talked about in the beginning of this movie but as we all know he was shot and killed by the police.
This ties up to what we talked about in class because a major section that we talked about was the depression era and this is when this piece takes place. The great depression is what helps John Dillinger get away with these things, especially because of how much the public likes him. The public at this time would have hated the banks as talked about in class so seeing John Dillinger rob these banks clean would have gained him a positive image in the public eye. He was portrayed somewhat of a Robin Hood character that the public could get behind.
This film seems to be historically accurate if one can get past all the Hollywood love seems and over dramatized lines of the actors. A few examples would be his place of death, which was actually in front of the theater depicted in the movie. They even went as far as recreating the gunshot wounds that killed him. He was also betrayed by that woman in real life as well as in the movie. He also did break out of jail and steal the car of the deputy as depicted in the movie. He did have a girl by the name of Billie Frachette and she did serve 2 years in prison. It also seems that the DOI, or future FBI, was following him and trying to capture him. J Edgar hoover did create a special task force for the capture of John Dillinger that was set up in Chicago The inaccuracies seem to be just small mistakes that probably helped dramatize the movie. A few of those mistakes would be that most of his gang appear to have died after John Dillinger died, not before as depicted in the movie. It seems many of the depicted shootouts never really occurred as well, showing how Hollywood just dramatized this movie. The biggest inaccuracy seems to be the relationship with Billie Frachette and John Dillinger. In the movie, it looked like their relationship lasted about two weeks where they were madly in love but could never really spend time together. In real life, they’re relationship lasted about 6 months before the capture of Billie Frachette. Billie Frachette even drove as a getaway driver for john once, though that was not depicted in the movies.
I would say that this film would be bad history. I thought that the movie contained too much Hollywood love scenes and well as over dramatic lines. I also think that combined with the inaccuracies of the movie that this movie shouldn’t be considered a good historical movie because it is just a typical Hollywood overdramatic movie with too much love scenes and not enough historical scenes.
The film was made only a few years ago and I think its sole purpose was to make money rather than inform the public of a historical figure of the mid 30s. This influenced the film to be made in the over dramatic way talked about earlier.
As one can tell I didn’t really like this movie because it was just another Hollywood movie rather than a good historical movie. The love scenes were very dramatic and not enough was shown of the characters themselves. I would have like this movie if they toned down these love scenes because that was really the bad part of this movie. I did like all the shootout scenes as well as the bank robbing scenes. But again for this to get a good rating from me, they would have had to cut all those love scenes and dialogue.
