Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . sums up the plot of THE LITTLE GIANT. This flick demonstrates that while hoodlums such as LITTLE CAESAR, SCARFACE, PUBLIC ENEMY, and Bugs Fenner might snuff a few American thugs, the REAL gangsters wear suits, and mugs such as Charles Keating, Kenneth Lay, and Bernie Madoff are far worse than the Al Capones of this world as they murder the American Dream for thousands of honest Working People at a clip. The Donald Handley Cass Family of California represents the Fat Cat U.S. One Per Centers in THE LITTLE GIANT. Pop, Ma, Sonny, and Sissy all are thieving weasels rotten to the core, willing to prostitute themselves in every way imaginable just to obtain a thousand times their fair share of America's Bounty so that they can enjoy a few hours of creature comforts prior to their Eternity of Burning Down Below. The man who would kill Bugs Fenner three years after portraying THE LITTLE GIANT, Edward G. Robinson, plays the Bugs character himself here--Jim "Bugs" Ahearn, to be exact. When he finds out how irredeemably rancid the Rich really are, Bugs realizes that the only way to deal with them is to give them a foretaste of their Roasting to Come, by literally holding their feet to the fire. Hot-Cha-Cha, as Jimmy Durante would say!

GManfred Prohibition ends and gangster boss Bugsy Ahearn, like so many during the depression, finds himself unemployed. What to do? Fortunately, he has laid aside much of his ill-gotten gains and has no money worries. So he decides to improve himself, to acquire some culture and move in elite circles. And therein lies a very funny story.Edward G. Robinson shows a flair for comedy and shows off some of his immense talent as a social climber who decides to shoot the moon. He moves from Chicago to the West Coast, buys a mansion and falls for a lady from a family of swindlers, and generally falls into a series of mishaps, each one funnier than the last. He gets excellent support from Mary Astor, who becomes his guide to the finer points of becoming 'quality'.You will gain great respect for Robinson if you've only seen him in tough-guy roles, as he carries the picture as a society naif in this written-for-the-screen comedy. There are no dead spots, either, as the story moves along briskly in an enjoyable 75 minutes. It was shown at Cinefest, Columbus, O., 6/13.

kidboots Part of Edward G. Robinson's longevity in movies was his ability to choose the occasional film that showed he could laugh at the tough characters he created. In "The Whole Town's Talking" (1935) and "A Slight Case of Murder" (1938) he successfully kidded his own genre but he did it first with "The Little Giant" (1933).He plays Bugsy Ahearn, a Chicago beer baron and the film begins with the election of President Roosevelt. That spells the end of prohibition but O'Hearn has already started making plans - reading books on ancient Greece by Plato (Pluto!!!), buying modern art, taking up golf, in other words getting "cultured"!! - he is determined to "crash society"!!! His gang is like one big happy family but after he and Al (Russell Hopton) go out to California, he finds he is swimming with sharks when he becomes entangled with the fortune hunting Cass family. He falls instantly in love with Polly (Helen Vinson) but each of the family fleeces him in different ways until the father sells him a worthless company. Of course they don't realise he has made his money bootlegging and when they do that is the only excuse they need to break Polly's engagement, flee the country and leave him holding the bag - but not before he sends for his old cronies to dispense some Chicago rough justice of his own.This movie is just so much fun - Edward G. Robinson almost over- powers the whole cast and he really struts his stuff and gives the movie going public exactly what they expected from him in 1933 but with the added bonus of laughs!!! Mary Astor is as usual gorgeous and fully up to Robinson as Ruth. She plays a once wealthy girl, whose father has been financially ruined and she is now reduced to renting out the family mansion to Ahearn. She becomes his unofficial teacher, showing him how to act, how to give dinner parties and also that not everyone is as horrible as the Casses. Helen Vinson played the fortune hunting Polly to perfection but, strangely, I found her not as attractive as she usually is. Berton Churchill had also perfected roles like the conniving Father Cass and he was excellent. Shirley Grey was another example of a pretty, talented actress who just didn't make it big - she played Ahearn's cast off mistress, Edith. It was nice to see Russell Hopton with a decent part in a grade A film. He has one of the best lines in the movie. When O'Hearn asks him if he has ever seen a painting like that before, he replies "Not since I stopped using cocaine!!!!!"Highly, Highly Recommended.

fowler1 Although the early sound era presented some problems - such as stationary camera shots with the actors nailed to their marks, and minimal use of background music resulting in long stretches of torpor - by 1931 most of these bugs had been corrected; thus the pre-censorship period of '31-'34 is chockfull of some of the most vigorous, creative and satisfying movies of Hollywood's Golden Age, however little-known many of them may be. LITTLE GIANT is one such hidden gem. A lightning-paced gangster comedy from the Warner-First National studio (where speed and economy were stylistic hallmarks), it's fast, funny and flippant in a manner that the decayed virgins of the Hays Office would render, if not impossible, at least awfully difficult after '34. Edward G Robinson plays Bugs Ahearn, a Chicago bootlegger put out of business by Prohibition's repeal, who decides to relocate to California and buy his way into society. Once there, he's immediately preyed upon by the type of 'respectable' vipers & parasites his background has left him ill-equipped to recognize, let alone fend off. This 'fish-out-of-water' comedy benefits greatly from a cheerfully amoral tone and a slew of zesty performances, not least of them Mary Astor's as a busted heiress who is the only non-hood here who's on the level. The mix of slapstick and rat-a-tat verbal comedy, coming at you at fast as it does, works very well, and nobody was better at this kind of hectic farce than the woefully-underrated Roy del Ruth, who was one of a number of sure & steady craftsmen who hit their peaks only under the Warners' aegis. In Del Ruth's case, the coming of the Code (and his subsequent move to MGM) proved to be disastrous: though he continued to direct till the late 50s, his post-Warners work was so drained of zest and inspiration that he is hardly remembered at all today. Even the auteurist crowd dismisses him as a competent hack. But do yourself a favor and seek out everything he did prior to 1935, and you'll be rewarded with a body of work that will surprise you with its cynical bite and confident staging. They play as well today as they did the day they opened. (Highly recommended, besides GIANT, are BLESSED EVENT, LADY KILLER, EMPLOYEES ENTRANCE & TAXI.)