Underworld

Not, as often asserted, 'the first gangster film', Underworld ignores Prohibition and Chicago's mobs, preferring a more fantastic vision of crime, culminating in a ball where thugs gather under a flag of truce and compete to have their molls named Queen. Ben Hecht's portentous scenario strives to emulate poet Carl Sandburg. It won the inaugural Academy Award for a screen story, but ignited a feud between director and writer, the first of many.