Reel History 10: Gangs of New York

When gangsters dressed like Batman villains

Imagine you're new to the United States- you've just arrived and settled in and everything is straight-up bonkers: all the currency looks the same! What, gallons instead of liters? It's the 21st Century and this country is still not using the metric system? Why are there so many ads for medications on TV? Where can I get a maple log? etc., etc. I am assuming most of the people reading this are from Canada, so it's safe to say the culture shock would be less than monumental. 

Now imagine you've arrived back to the 1850s. As an immigrant, you might be German- 5 million arrived between 1850 and 1930- or an Irish Catholic looking to escape famine- 4.5 million Irish arrived between 1820-1930. You'd head to a large urban center, like New York, looking for a job in the emerging industry of the northern Unites States. As you arrive at the port, perhaps you're greeted by an opportunistic politician who sees you as nothing more than a walking vote; maybe an angry hordes is shouting at you to go back to your home. Maybe you walk right into a conscription line to join the Union Army, like the 144,000 other Irish or 177,000 other Germans. Or maybe, given your temperament, you take up with another army, one that would defend your right to live in New York.

Gangs of New York concerns itself with the last group, telling the story of those who chose to brawl it out in the streets for protection and influence, political or otherwise. Martin Scorsese's movie deals with warfare at Manhattan's Five Points district, the convergence of five streets that happened to be one of the city's most notorious slums, an area dominated by a number of large gangs. While most of the characters are fictional, the gangs of Gangs are not- the Bowery Boys, lead by Bill 'The Butcher' Cutting (played by Daniel Day-Lewis, the best performance of the movie) and the Dead Rabbits of our protagonist Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), were very real, and just two of many different gangs representing many different interests.

Even Charles Dickens was less than impressed with the scenery- here he describes the Five Points in his American Notes for Circulation:

"What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points."

"This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and all the world over."

"Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken forays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?"

It was also packed with newly arrived immigrants, a sizable African-American community, and very, very territorial 'natives'. And from this convergence of poverty-stricken groups is where we get the movie's tension. It begins with a fight between the Dead Rabbits, a gang of immigrants lead by a priest played by Liam Neeson, and the Bowery Boys, lead by Bill the Butcher, 15 years before the Civil War. Neeson is killed, the Dead Rabbits are broken up and declared illegal by Bill's tyrannical street rule, and Neeson's son escapes the clutches of an orphanage. The story resets in 1862 with the son, now a fully grown Leonardo DiCaprio, working his way up the gangland hierarchy to get his revenge on Bill, which involves, in classic gangster fashion, getting close to his most hated enemy.

There's so much history in Gangs it's amazing- the history of the Five Points, sure, but there's the Civil War, PT Barnum, Boss Tweed and his gang at Tammany Hall, American nativism and its reaction to Irish immigration, the draft riots of 1863 against lopsided conscription, and so much more. America's early history is soaked in blood, and it reminds us that while the Fathers may have crafted one of the best republics on paper, the sailing was never smooth.

I like Gangs of New York a lot, but it's certainly one of Scorsese's more Hollywood offerings, which I think makes it a lesser movie in his oeuvre. He's a master at telling the stories of the personal lives of low level criminals, with movies like Mean Streets and Goodfellas being bona fide classics; and while he's certainly concentrating on the criminal element here, there's a scope that's far outside just the small time crooks. I was far more interested in learning more about the history of the movie than the actual plot, because while in Daniel Day-Lewis we get one of Scorsese's great villains with his performance as Bill 'the Butcher' Cutting, in Leonardo DiCaprio's Amsterdam Vallon we get one of his more boring protagonists. The Departed does essentially what Gangs does, but in a much more claustrophobic, tense, and ultimately entertaining manner. Gangs also suffers from a rather anti-climatic final act, with Bill and Amsterdam fighting in a cloud of smoke while the city riots around them; Bill is struck by the gunfire and is ultimately finished off by Amsterdam. The ending is pretty beautiful, though.

One thing that Scorsese makes clear is that this sense of 'otherness' created by nativists like Bill the Butcher still included black people. Despite New York's inclusion in the Union, it still wasn't safe to be a free black person in a large city, and the draft riots of 1863 quickly turned into race riots. In the movie, Amsterdam's friend Jimmy Spoils is easily spotted and killed by rioters; in real life, it's estimated that 100 black people were killed in the three days of rioting, and many abolitionists and black homes were targeted.

So while Gangs of New York shows a pretty bad side of New York, the reality probably was worse than any movie can convey. Herbert Asbury, the author of the book that Gangs was based on (yes, it was based on a book!), says that in 1862, more than 82 thousand New Yorkers, 10 percent of the population, were arrested by police. In 1862 alone!

Kinda makes you wonder what other great movies could be made about this same era.

NEXT TIME: Abraham Lincoln- one great citizen.