I was watching the 1931 MGM gangster film “The Secret Six” the other day when we got the following scene. The Al-Capone-like figure Louis “Slaughterhouse” Scorpio (Wallace Beery) has finally been picked up by the cops, and from behind bars he sees them sweating Metz (Murray Kinnell, Putty Nose from “The Public Enemy”), an operative who has long pretended to be a deaf-mute even though he's neither. And as Slaughterhouse realizes what's going on, the danger he's in, the door between him and Metz closes. 

What did it remind me of? The great end shot of the first “Godfather” movie, of course: Kay's realization of what's going on, what her husband has become, and the danger she's in. 

If “The Secret Six” sounds interesting to you, well, let's just say it's full of missed opportunities. Or the version I saw on Amazon Prime is one of those pre-code flicks that got re-released post-code and got chopped up and never put back together. Plus the version I saw on Amazon is soft and blurry. Fucking shame, really. We know who the crooks are now.