ontroversially, the cinema has always made criminals look cool. The big screen loves bad guys and, to modify Blake's description of Milton, has often been of the devil's party, while knowing it perfectly well...
The gangster genre showed how criminal networks operated inside their own fiercely moral codes and stood in direct opposition to courtroom dramas such as Twelve Angry Men, with its formal endorsement of the letter of the law. The noir genre of the 40s and 50s conversely found criminality to reside not in dynastic cultures or parodic societal norms but in individual acts of cynicism, obsession and desperation.
Crime becomes lighter with the caper genre, such as The Italian Job, whereas the Ealing comedies found the bitterest black comedy in murder and a queasy celebration of the entrepreneurial daring in crime.
