The topic that I’m specifically interested in is Leonardo DiCaprio’s cinematic portrayal of the evolution of the American gangster. This topic relates to the course as per Unit 2’s “Gangster” topic and relation to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, all the while incorporating Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby (2013) within this topic’s lineage. I am interested in this topic as I am a film major who is relatively familiar but not acquainted with these specific works of renowned directors such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and would love to be to broaden my knowledge not only within the topic pertaining to this course, but my major as well. As someone who has recently begun to analyze films in depth, I feel as though my analytic background of films (especially gangster films) will allow me to make strong parallels to secondary scholarly sources. I also know that DiCaprio’s fictional portrayal of Amsterdam Vallon in The Gangs of New York is still historically accurate to some respects, especially as the “Dead Rabbits” gang was one of America’s first notorious. I know that western films and gangster films have many overlaps as well, which makes the incorporation of The Quick and The Dead (1995) and DiCaprio’s character still manage to fit the linear timeline I am attempting to establish of the gangster’s evolution in America.
I narrowed down my focus as I found five gangster films that DiCaprio performed in that all take place relatively within different timeframes across the century between 1860/1980 (the gangster’s “birth”) and 1980 (where the gangster was still prominent). I want to arguably delineate what traits of the gangster prevailed throughout history, where certain aspects became less prominent, and where newer aspects may have arisen. These qualities, which I’ve been familiarized by Warshow, Pauly, and Ruth’s works in Unit 2, are what I will be putting into question for this paper.
My research plan is to work off of my established timeline to first align all of the DiCaprio characters that I have chosen within the gangster archetype. Attributing scholarly identified traits to these characters will be the most important, as once I decide which characters embody what traits, I can begin to compare and contrast along with the times in which the films are set. To this degree, the film’s publication date will not matter, as only the times in which they are set in place will. Once I discover the contrasts between these traits, I can use other scholarly articles to argue why the contrasts occurred.
Currently, the timeline goes as follows (setting, not publication years):
- 1863: Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York | DiCaprio portraying Amsterdam Vallon.
- 1881: Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead | DiCaprio portraying Fee “The Kid” Herod.
- 1920s: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon | DiCaprio portraying Ernest Burkhart.
- 1922: Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby | DiCaprio portraying Jay Gatsby.
- 1969: Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can | DiCaprio portraying Frank Abagnale Jr.
- 1987: Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street | DiCaprio portraying Jordan Belfort.