History at the Movies: A Prohibition Movie List

The passage of the 18th Amendment kicked off a weird and interesting period of U.S. history. These movies bring that period to life.

The Idle Class

Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 satire about a society lady who accidentally brings home the Little Tramp instead of her hard-partying husband (an understandable oops since Chaplin plays both the Tramp and the husband) gets right to the point: It’s the rich elite who waste their productive hours drinking illegal cocktails and dancing the night away, while the lower classes keep slogging at the factories, offices, and family homes.

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The Roaring Twenties

In this gritty 1939 drama, it’s World War I that shapes both the excess and violence of the 1920s. The two main characters — good guy turned bootlegger Jimmy Cagney and his tough frenemy Humphrey Bogart first meet in the trenches and then again in the New York Prohibition scene. There’s no happy ending, just a chilling reminder that “at some distant date, we will be confronted with another period similar to the one depicted.”

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Some Like It Hot

Though it was released in 1959, Some Like It Hot brings the turbulent 20s to life, especially the shifting position of women as seen through the eyes of Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe). Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two musicians who get on the wrong side of the mob and decide the best defense is a good disguise: They don the ubiquitous flapper garb and hook up with Sugar’s jazz band. Much fun and wackiness ensue, but the larger-than-life, heartsore 1920s is the backdrop.

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The Untouchables

Brian De Palma’s 1987 classic takes on the criminal element of Prohibition, focusing on Elliot Ness and the FBI team tasked with taking down infamous gangster Al Capone. The train station scene has become a class in cinematography, but the movie perfectly captures the simmering violence always lurking beneath the flash and jazz of the 1920s.

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The Thin Man

Nick and Nora Charles’s nonstop martini-drinking seems like it should seriously impair their detective abilities, but in this 1934 film, alcohol fuels everything for the very-very rich amateur detectives, whose main goal seems to be to look fabulous whatever insane situation comes their way.

This list is excerpted from the Prohibition unit study in the winter 2020 issue of HSL.

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