Like most film genres, the roots of the gangster genre started in the silent era. The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) was directed by D.W. Griffith and featured the gangster villain ‘The Snapper Kid’ who leaches off society, but is rewarded with money rather than being punished for his anti-social crimes. This film already showed the signs of realism through its use of location and representation of gangs and crime in the slums (Historical context and Genre conventions). Although it featured a gangster character at this early date, it was the 1930s’ classic Hollywood gangster cycle that was the real beginning of the genre.
The 1930s were the defining moment, and it was this period which created the rules, conventions, and iconography of the genre as a whole (Historical context).
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