Starring Leo Carrillo, Constance Cummings, Robert Young
Produced by Columbia Pictures Corporation
John Smith is an up and coming architect. He has great friends. He's just been hired to build a hotel in Florida. He only has one small problem...
His name isn't John Smith. It's Marco Ricca. And Marco is the son of Tony Ricca, a prominent mob boss engaged in a war with Mike Palmiero and his clan.
Shortly after arriving in Florida, Smith ends up at a Palmiero party and meets the fetching Maria, Mike's daughter. Being the children of rival gangsters, the two immediately fall in love.
Mike is a protective father who begins sniffing out Maria's new beau. Can the couple end their families' hatred? Or will they become victims of the violence?
The Guilty Generation is not at all what I was expecting.
On its face, the movie is a Romeo and Juliet tale set against the backdrop of the Italian mafia with a supporting turn from Boris Karloff as the head of the Ricca clan.
However, about 20 minutes in, a strange thing happens. Leo Carrillo appears on the screen as Mike Palmiero and, scene by scene, he takes the film over. We spend more time with him worrying over his daughter and this stranger that's come into her life than we do with couple. And when the lovers do get together, their single-minded focus becomes how Mike will respond when they elope.
It's always odd to watch the film recalibrate itself from a film about star-crossed lovers to a film about an enraged father. That said, I think it works. Carrillo is so good here as the bad guy that we want to spend time with him. He claims to want to end his gang war, but it is clear he wants to do it on his terms. Only if Ricca loses more than him is he willing to call a truce. In the end, we want to see which code of honor means more to him: that of a father or that of a kingpin.
Which is ultimately where the movie falters. The tension in the film is all about when Smith will be discovered as a Ricca and how Mike will react. You'd think it could go one of two ways (he either kills Marco or lets his daughter be happy). Instead, the film ties everything up through a third option which manages to be both random and unearned.
Despite a clunky love story and a shoddy climax, Carrillo gives me enough to recommend The Guilty Generation. But just barely.
*** out of *****
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