Josef von Sternberg's Underworld is a fascinating early cornerstone of both the director's worldview and the gangster genre. While its swagger and vendettas left indelible fingerprints on the gangland classics of the early '30s (screenwriter Ben Hecht would shamelessly recycle such elements as the delusion-of-greatness neon sign and the barricaded shootout for the original Scarface), Sternberg's evocation of a cosmos of mobsters and molls is far removed from the grime and grit of the later Warner Bros. films. Where those underworlds are muscular, bristling, and tabloid-rough, Sternberg's is ethereal and oneiric, gliding from scene to scene like the feather that floats into the saloon as the fates of its three protagonists become intertwined.