Warner Home Video has released two sets of gangster film collections on Blu-ray under the umbrella titles of Ultimate Gangster Collection: Classics and Ultimate Gangster Collection: Contemporary. The first set features Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, The Petrified Forest and White Heat all given new Blu-ray upgrades along with a brand new feature length documentary on the history of the gangster film. The four films, all of which contain extras transported from previous DVD releases are also available separately.

The second set features the previously released Mean Streets, The Untouchables, GoodFellas, Heat and The Departed.

Gangsters on screen date back to 1898, but films made prior to the late 1920s focused on petty criminals. Organized crime, which came of age with Prohibition (1920-1933), did not become source material for films until the late 1920s, but became popular out of the gate. Ben Hecht won the first Oscar for Best Original Story for 1927’s Underworld. The genre really took off with the advent of sound which could add to the look and feel of the gangster film the language of the gangster as well as the rat-a-tat-tat sound of machine gun fire, which was different than the rifle and cannon fire that permeated western and war films.

Three films are credited with the stylization of the gangster film which held sway through the forties and into the fifties. Two were Warner Bros. films included here, the third which was produced by Howard Hughes was initially a United Artists release now owned by Universal. They were, of course, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy and Scarface, which although not a Warner Bros. film, was for the most part made by people associated with the studio and made in the Warner Bros. style. All three films follow the indoctrination of a petty crook into organized crime, his rise in the syndicate and his eventual downfall. All three have vivid, unforgettable endings.

These films also advanced the careers of their stars. Paul Muni had been a famed stage actor who already had an Oscar nomination under his belt for 1929’s The Valiant but his screen career had been stalled until Scarface came along. Edward G. Robinson, who had been in occasional films since 1916 and James Cagney who had just made his first film in 1930, were both considered supporting players. They both just had featured roles in films in which Lew Ayres was the film’s male lead, Robinson in East Is West and Cagney in Doorway to Hell.

Robinson was cast as Little Caesar because of his strong resemblance to Al Capone, the Chicago gangster whose lie story paralleled the action in the film. Cagney was cast in the second lead in The Public Enemy in which rising star Eddie Woods was given the lead. A couple of days into filming, director William Wellman realized the casting was cockeyed, reversed Cagney and Woods’ roles and voila, another star was born.

Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, the first two films in the first set remain vibrant today with their unforgettable lead performances, but The Public Enemy, filmed on location on the streets of New York, vs. the studio back lot Chicago of Little Caesar, is the more cinematic. Robinson and Cagney as early as the following year were parodying their characters in other films, but their original images stuck. They continued to play hard-nosed gangsters in films throughout the 1930s, refusing to do so from 1940 on until Robinson made the plunge again in 1948’s Key Largo and Cagney topped himself in 1949’s White Heat.

The violence in Little Caesar, The Public Enemy and Scarface hastened the restrictions put on films under the Hollywood Production Code from 1934 on. When Warner Bros. attempted to re-release The Public Enemy in 1936, they were thwarted by the censors. The film was not shown again until 1954.

Once the Production Code took effect, on-screen violence was considerably tamer. A prime example is 1936’s The Petrified Forest, the third film in the first set. The film, adapted from the Broadway success, stars Leslie Howard and Bette Davis and is mostly talk until Humphrey Bogart shows up midway through and takes over the film as a menacing killer on the lam. The film provided Bogie with one of his best roles on the road to his own superstardom which did not occur until he played a more sympathetic gangster in 1941’s High Sierra.

Cagney had his first gangster role since 1939’s The Roaring Twenties in 1949’s White Heat, the fourth film in the first set. With the easing of the Production Code in the post-World War II years, this very violent gangster flick provided Cagney with one his most vicious characters and best remembered performances. Once seen, it’s impossible to forget Cagney’s “top of the world, Ma” demise.

All four films look better than ever on Blu-ray.

Films in the second set offer the same transfers and extras as on their previous Blu-ray releases.

Veteran cinematographer and documentarian Haskell Wexler made his feature film directing debut with 1969’s Medium Cool which chronicles the events leading up to and during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. Wexler and his crew had carte blanche to film at the convention until things got out of hand.

Robert Forster played the hard-edged investigative TV reporter, Peter Bonerz his cameraman, Verna Bloom and Harold Blankenship the Appalachian mother and son Forster becomes involved with. Blankenship, a non-professional, was taken out of the ghetto and given access to things he never knew existed including his first ever shower in a hotel room. After filming finished, he was returned to the ghetto. No one knows where he is now.

The Blu-ray of Medium Cool comes with tons of extras.

Twilight Time, the boutique video company, has released 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven and 1993’s Philadelphia on Blu-ray in limited editions of 3,000 copies each. Both look stunning on the higher definition format, especially Leave Her to Heaven which has been restored as close as possible to its original luster. Inasmuch as the original negative has been lost, a true restoration of the film’s Oscar winning Technicolor cinematography was impossible, but the technicians have approximated Leon Shamroy’s work as closely as we’ll ever get to see it. Gene Tierney’s gorgeousness and her character’s vileness have never been more delightfully shimmering.

This week’s new releases include George Gently, Series Five on both Blu-ray and standard DVD and the 50th Anniversary Edition of Cleopatra on Blu-ray.