Underworld is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft. The film launched Sternberg's eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story.
Film poster
George Bancroft (left) and Evelyn Brent
Image: Underworld (film) 1927. Josef von Sternberg, director. George Bancroft
Image: Underworld (film) 1927. Josef von Sternberg, director. L to R Evelyn Brent, Clive Brook
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but also include comedy, and, in turn, is divided into many sub-genres, such as mystery, suspense or noir.
Humphrey Bogart in The Petrified Forest (1936)
Salah Zulfikar in The Killers (1971)