Compare And Contrast: Dillinger (1973) vs Public Enemies (2009)

I finally caught up with Public Enemies, Michael Mann’s 2009 film based on Bryan Burrough's book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34.

As a pop culture history buff, the subject matter fascinates me, but I’m also a huge fan of John Milius’ 1973 film, Dillinger, and wanted to see how it compared, especially since both films were written or co-written by their directors, and both directors have produced memorable work.

So how does Public Enemies measure up to Dillinger?

Very well.  Not as good, but very well indeed. 

The easiest way to describe the difference between the two is that Dillinger is one of the best B-movies ever made, impeccably cast with familiar supporting character actors (and one future superstar) and ingeniously stretching its budget to maximum effect, while Public Enemies is an opulent near-epic, clearly an A-film with an A-list cast.

Advantage:  Dillinger, for getting the most bang for the buck.

Both films cover the FBI’s war against John Dillinger and other notorious bank robbers / outlaws of the era.  Plot-wise they are so similar that Public Enemies could easily be mistaken as a remake of Dillinger.

Part of this is because they’re working with the same source material, of course, but neither film is attempting to be a docu-drama that sticks scrupulously with the facts.

Rather, each is a historical fiction based on real events, but uses those events to examine both the era and the mindsets of Dillinger and his FBI nemesis, Melvin Purvis.

They both tell great stories, and quite a bit of truth is told in the process, but they make a hash of the historical record.

Dillinger and Purvis never met nor had any direct communication during Dillinger’s crime spree.  Both movies establish brief but fleeting personal contacts between the two in order to heighten the drama, but the reality is they never laid eyes on one another, at least not while Dillinger was alive.

The actual timelines are also jumbled up in both films (for example, Pretty Boy Floyd was killed after Dillinger, but both movies show him dying first, in Public Enemies’ case well before Purvis focuses his hunt on Dillinger).  

While inaccurate, this cinematic restructuring is dramatically forgivable since it directs the attention on the hunt for Dillinger, the most notorious American outlaw since Jesse James.

Truth be told, the actual hunt for Dillinger and other Depression era outlaws was a messy / slipshod / chaotic affair with many mistakes and missed opportunities.  Showing it as it actually played out would prove frustrating and anticlimactic to audiences, so poetic license is approved in this case.

Advantage:  Tie

Structurally, both films intercut between the Dillinger and Purvis characters as they rocket towards their final confrontation.

In Public Enemies, young Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) realizes the ruthless Dillinger gang possesses an animal cunning and criminal instinct that the fresh cut newly recruited college boys of the FBI can’t hope to match, and begs J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) for help which arrives in the form of veteran Texas lawman, Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang).

This makes for an interesting sub-plot in Public Enemies as the old and new FBI agents must learn to work with one another and appreciate each’s different talents and skill sets.

Dillinger sidesteps this by casting already long-in-the-tooth veteran character actor Ben Johnson as Purvis.

In terms of historical accuracy, no.  Johnson looks more like Purvis’ grandfather than Purvis himself, and a sub-plot about him being engaged to a 20-something young woman gets a little creepy.

On the other hand, it’s Ben fnckin’ Johnson, so no matter how wildly inaccurate it’s going to be, you know it plays like a charm.

Bale’s character seems rather bloodless in comparison.

Advantage:  Public Enemies, because in the final run Dillinger is meant as a rip-roarin’ melodrama and Public Enemies, no matter how action packed, as a straight drama, and as such Bale not only inhabits his character’s skin with more emotional accuracy for what Mann is trying to do, but son of a gun, even looks like the actual Purvis.

So who’s the best Dillinger hizzowndamnself?

Not even gonna tease this one out. 

Advantage:   Dillinger, as the role Warren Oates was born to play.  His resemblance to the real John Dillinger is uncanny, and his hard bitten attitude and underlying fatalism fits perfectly in Milius’ tale.  Johnny Depp is entertaining, and his character is a complex and haunted one, but in the end he comes across as just as much of a college boy as Bale’s Purvis.

Which leads up to the supporting cast and the respective screenplays.

There’s a scene in Milius’ Dillinger where Homer Van Meter (Harry Dean Stanton) carjacks a young college student while fleeing the FBI and takes him hostage.

While they drive along, they get to talking, and Van Meter learns the college student plays football for his school.  Van Meter says he played center for the state penitentiary team.

“You don’t look big enough to be a center,” says the college student.

“I was big enough,” Van Meter says coldly.

And that right there sums up the biggest difference between the two films.

No slam against the expert cast of Public Enemies, but the supporting players in Dillinger inhabit their characters far better, and with far more to do than Mann’s film.

The actors playing outlaws in Public Enemies never actually seem to be part of a gang while Milius’ cast -- in addition to Stanton including Cloris Leachman, Geoffrey Lewis, Michelle Phillips, and soon-to-be major box office draw Richard Dreyfuss -- seemed whole and organic.

Part of this has to do with the focus of each screenplay.

Advantage:  Dillinger, with the caveat that Marion Cotillard just narrowly edges Phillips out as the better Billie Frechette, Dillinger’s tragic love interest; her last scene, as she struggles to remain stoic despite a host of conflicting emotions raging through her, is breathtaking.

Despite being based on the same true life events, and despite their structural similarities, John Milius’s screenplay for Dillinger and Michael Mann / Ann Biderman / Ronan Bennett’s screenplay for Public Enemies differ in several crucial areas, most notably being who the story focuses on.

With Millius the focus is on Dillinger and his gang.  The pursuing law enforcement officers are embodied in the form of Ben Johnson’s Melvin Purvis, a cigar-smoking / overcoat-wearing / Thompson-toting angel of death stalking Dillinger.

Warren Oates’ Dillinger possesses no illusions about the outcome of this conflict and, despite his bravado in taunting Purvis, knows full well how his story will end and that all he can do is keep trying to add chapters before the book is closed.

Mann, on the other hand, is really more interested in the FBI’s reaction to the crime wave sweeping the country, not just in the technical law enforcement end of catching criminals, but the intricate political dance that Hoover must do to maintain control and authority.  The internal struggles of the FBI team led by Christian Bale’s Purvis are played interestingly and well, and one sees the two groups -- Dillinger’s gang and Purvis’ FBI team -- both as standing on the cusp of a new age, but only Purvis’ team will have the foresight and ability to see that future.

There are two scenes in Public Enemies that harken to scenes in earlier movies.  

In one, reminiscent of the Bledsoe scene in William Goldman’s Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (another story about criminals running out of time in every sense of the word), Dillinger confronts syndicate soldier Phil D'Andrea (John Ortiz) as to why the Chicago mob will no longer launder his stolen money or offer him a place to hide out. D'Andrea informs him that the bookie joint they’re in makes as much money in a single day as Dillinger makes in a bank robbery, and it makes that money every day all year long, and that money buys protection from the police…

…unless they’re looking for John Dillinger.

Which basically means the web of corruption is complete, and that Dillinger and Purvis are both outside it, and as such Dillinger no longer has protection and Purvis will find cooperation…

…just as long as he’s chasing after lone operators like Dillinger.

The second scene is from Michael Mann’s own Heat, the famous coffee house scene between LAPD Lieutenant Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and professional thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), in which Hanna asks McCauley if he has enough time to do what he wants to do.

“No,” McCauley says.  “Not yet.”

That’s echoed in a scene in Public Enemies where Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) tries to recruit Dillinger for one last big score, with the promise there will be enough money for Dillinger to flee to Cuba.

Dillinger agrees he wants to flee, but not to Cuba, but rather somewhere the US can’t touch him.

This marks a crucial difference in the Dillinger character in the two films.

Warren Oates’ Dillinger is just buying time, holding off the inevitable for as long as he can, but never pretending that day of reckoning isn’t coming.

Johnny Depp’s Dillinger has the hubris to think he can get away with it.

It’s a major thematic difference and it’s one that takes Depp’s Dillinger out of the poverty stricken working class background of Oates’ take on the character, and instead has him rubbing philosophical and class elbows with Bale’s Purvis (though in all fairness, it can also be said Ben Johnson’s Purvis and Oates’ Dillinger know each other all too well).

Advantage:  Dillinger, despite Public Enemies’ interesting philosophical twist on the material, comes across much stronger because its characters -- gangsters and G-men -- are morally honest at their core.

Public Enemies took great pains to shoot at actual locations where the events occurred whenever possible, and packed their scenes with scores of authentically dressed background players.

Milius filmed Dillinger primarily in Oklahoma, using real towns and locales that remained virtually untouched since the 1910s.

When Public Enemies did build sets -- in particular for the bank robbery scenes -- they looked like something out of a James Bond movie, so much so one half expects Goldfinger to be part of the gang.

Dillinger’s banks were crummy little small town hole in the wall enterprises, and whether accurate or not, far more evocative of the desperation felt during that era.

Advantage:  Dillinger, for making everything seem more real and authentic, and using the sparseness of its scenes as a plus, not a handicap.

Final tally:  Dillinger, for me, remains the clear winner despite the really top notch job Michael Mann and company turned in on Public Enemies.  It’s an altogether more satisfying take on the tale, one that doesn’t get overshadowed by the production itself.

© Buzz Dixon