Tony's Corner: A Fan's Notes
"UNTOUCHABLE"
James Malone: "Do you know what a blood oath is Mr. Ness?"
Eliot Ness: "Yes."
Malone: "Good. 'Cause you just took one."
"What the Hell, you've got to die of something!" --Malone,
as a raid on horseback of Al Capone's heavily
armed bootleggers gets off to an ill-timed start.
On January 16th, Paramount Home Video finally saw fit to release Brian De Palma's 1987
gangster epic THE UNTOUCHABLES on DVD. While you can quibble about the lack of extra
features, and that ever elusive director's commentary from De Palma, one thing that can't
be argued is that the movie hasn't looked or sounded this good since the summer of '87,
when it was one of the top grossing films of the season, and until MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, De
Palma's biggest ever commercial success.
Herein lies my, and I dare say other's, initially problematic relationship with the
picture. Overlooked as often as it's been underrated, THE UNTOUCHABLES is a film that,
through the years has been all too readily dismissed by hardcore De Palma fans (myself
included), as an impersonal, big-budgeted commercial film, that plays fast and loose with
historical fact. De Palma's first "square film" is, I believe, how Pauline Kael
saw it. A paean to the FBI is how the typically snide Jonathan Rosenbaum described it,
apparently not noticing that Ness and his men actually worked under the aegis of the U.S.
Treasury Department. In fairness to some of the more skeptical among us, it is after all a
movie that's director took on largely because of it's strengths as a commercial property.
Following on the heels of two successive box office failures in BODY DOUBLE and WISE GUYS,
De Palma agreed to direct Art Linson's production in large measure because of his belief
in own stated proviso that in the cutthroat world of Hollywood moviemaking, "three
strikes and you're out." So, even the most die-hard of supporters might be forgiven
for looking at the finished film with a slightly jaundiced eye.
Ah, but as we've all come to learn from watching so many De Palma films, trusting your
eyes, jaundiced or not, as the case may be, is not always a smart proposition. Love at
first sight may be fine in matters of the heart, but rarely do we come away from a first
viewing of a film, any film, let alone one as complicated and multi-layered as a Brian De
Palma film, with anything even approaching a definitive response. And so without any
further delay, here are some thoughts, some long held, some the result of this latest
phase of my ongoing reappraisal, on THE UNTOUCHABLES.
Let's start in an area that most people tend to overlook when it comes to De Palma: the
acting. Robert De Niro's Al Capone. There's little doubt that Bob Hoskins, who was cast in
the part when De Niro was seemingly unavailable, would have done an excellent job. He's a
consummate actor, one who bore a much closer resemblance to Capone than De Niro did. His
turn as Owney Madden in Coppola's THE COTTON CLUB, as well as his work in THE LONG GOOD
FRIDAY more than proved he could pull off the part, but he could never in a million years
bring to the film what De Niro could. De Niro is Capone, if not physically, than certainly
mythologically. His role, however miniscule, eclipses every other actors' previous
attempts to such a degree, Rod Steiger, Ben Gazzara, Paul Muni (Tony Camonte in the
original SCARFACE was a thinly disguised Hollywoodization of Capone), that in our shared
pop culture consciousness, this is the real Al Capone.
De Niro added much needed weight to the film. As much as the pun is intended, I'm
referring not just to the infamous added-on poundage that approached the self-punishment
he inflicted upon himself when he starred as Jake LaMotta in RAGING BULL, but rather the
collective weight of all our movie memories. Of Vito Corleone on the crowded streets of
Little Italy in THE GODFATHER PART II. Of Johnny Boy, blowing up mailboxes, and dodging
loansharks in MEAN STREETS. Of the melancholic resignation of Noodles Aaronson in ONCE
UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, a film that has much in common with THE UNTOUCHABLES. If THE
UNTOUCHABLES does finally approach the rarified air of these and other gangster film
classics, it is due, at least in part, to De Niro's scene stealing performance.
Kevin Costner had been a star on the rise in Hollywood in the years leading up to THE
UNTOUCHABLES, especially notable in two 1985 films, FANDANGO and SILVERADO. He became a
star of the first rank as Eliot Ness. Now given his track record ever since, that may or
may not have been such a good thing, but here, his straight arrow T-man is the epicenter
of the film, the eye of it's gathering storm. Among all of these blood thirsty gangsters,
rogue cops, and crooked politicians, he is a rock steady, moral, law-abiding, God-fearing
family man, and perfectly content to be so, "It's nice to be married." It's the
most thankless part in the movie, and it is to Costner's great credit that, despite De
Niro's charismatic Capone, we are with him and his crew of untouchables every step of the
way.
Andy Garcia and Charlie Martin Smith as well as Patricia Clarkson, Billy Drago, and
Richard Bradford round out an excellent supporting cast, and all have their own moments to
shine. I'll just briefly mention Garcia's first scene, his wonderfully tense confrontation
with Malone at the police academy. Smith's role, essentially a comic relief part, is given
unexpected dignity and grace during that heartbreaking moment in the elevator, when he
comes face to face with the angel of death himself, personified by the spectral,
wraithlike presence of Drago as Frank Nitti, Capone's number one enforcer, and as chilling
a villain as any De Palma has given us. Drago looks nothing like the historical Nitti, and
his fate in real life was quite different from the one De Palma's stages for him later in
the film. Many critics of the film have cited the vast array of historical inaccuracies
and distortions, and at one time I must confess that this aspect of the film was troubling
to me for a long time as well. I have since come to recognize the film for what it is, as
opposed to damning it for what it is not. What is inherently great about THE UNTOUCHABLES
is precisely it's pumped up, mythological, pulp fictionalized account of a time and place
that we've all seen a thousand times before. David Mamet's exalted language, his poetry of
the streets, is a perfect aural match for De Palma's Leonesque visual ambitions. The film
comes on like ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA directed by the Leone of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND
THE UGLY, with a good measure of John Ford's LIBERTY VALANCE thrown into the mix. In other
words a pure pop masterpiece.
One can't talk about the acting in this film without discussing Sir Sean Connery. Connery
had starred in dozens of films since coming to prominence as James Bond in 1962's DR. NO,
but incredibly, until THE UNTOUCHABLES, he'd never even been nominated for an Academy
Award, let alone win one, as he did for his stirring portrayal of the hardened beat cop
James Malone. Malone is seemingly the one cop in Chicago stubborn or stupid enough to
resist going on Capone's payroll. He lives alone, and has a habit of answering a knock on
his door armed with a double barreled gun. When we first meet him, he's a man in his late
fifties, still walking a lonely midnight beat, who comes across a devastated and
humiliated Ness, who only hours earlier had himself gotten a taste of what he was truly up
against, trying to nail Al Capone in corrupt Chicago. They form a reluctant alliance, one
that will grow touchingly and believably deep as the film goes on, until Connery's
magnificent death scene. In a brilliantly staged sequence, De Palma gives Malone a death
worthy of one of Kurosawa's samurai warriors. There's powerfully moving moment between two
men who never had a chance to express their love for one another. When Ness arrives too
late to do anything but hold his friend and mentor, as he dies, convulsing and bleeding
profusely, in his arms. Costner, as Ness, let's loose with an anguished cry of "Not
this man, not This Man!" as Connery's Malone presses his beloved St. Jude medal into
his friend's hand, an item that is passed through the film like a talisman. At this
moment, we recall with great poignancy that scene earlier in the film when a reluctant
Malone tries to resist Ness' recruitment, saying that over time, "...it got more
important to me...to stay alive." All while he nervously fidgeted with that same
medal. It's easy to see why Connery got the Oscar, he gets most of the best lines in the
movie, he is astonishingly charismatic, a true legend, but his death scene alone, from
beginning to end, one of the great unsung De Palma setpieces, was reason enough for him to
warrant receiving the Best Supporting Actor nod.
On the technical side, what is there to say that hasn't been said time and time again. The
movie is beyond beautiful. The sets and costumes are period perfect and so wonderfully
rich in color, detail, and design. The realization of 1930's Chicago, and it's
gangster/speakeasy/prohibition milieu is a complete and total artistic success. Patrizia
von Brandenstein, Milos Forman's regular designer, credited here as the film's visual
consultant, whatever her title, her work and the work of scores of designers and costumers
is nothing short of enthralling. Steve Burum's photography, in only his second film with
De Palma is, if anything, even more astounding. The film is classically lit, deliberately
calling to mind all of those classic Warner Bros. gangster pictures starring Bogart,
Cagney, and Edward G. Robinson, but those patented De Palma overhead angles, swooping
pans, stedicam glides, and majestic use of slow motion are also everywhere in evidence.
The editing is by the dynamic duo of Jerry Greenberg and Bill Pankow, and it is
heartstoppingly precise and lyrically beautiful. The rhythmic flow of their cutting is all
of a piece, and perfectly locked into one of the greatest scores by one of the greatest
and most prolific of film composers, the legendary Ennio Morricone. This was his first
collaboration with De Palma and it is as memorable a score as any that has ever graced a
De Palma picture. The main theme is a sweeping, gorgeously emotional orchestral work that
flows contrapuntally in and out of a more rat-a-tat-tat snare and synth theme, that should
sound out of place given the film's period setting, but in actuality, works like a dream.
As for the man himself, well for De Palma, the opportunity to be at the controls of this
particular giant toy train set, seemed to truly inspire him to the very heights of his
powers as a visual artist. He directs the hell out of the picture, ringing every bit of
dramatic tension out of nearly every scene, pushing his actors to their limits, and
beyond. The so called "square" parts of the picture, the scenes of Ness'
domestic bliss are indeed, at least up until that time, very un-De Palma-like. They are
helped along immensely by the greatly appealing Patricia Clarkson as Ness' wife, and by a
little girl who manages to be cute without being cloying, as their daughter. More
importantly, these scenes are hardly the awkward filler that some critics took them for.
They are integral to the film, as well as to De Palma's development as an artist with an
ever increasing palette, where they serve to act as a very effective antithesis to the
treacherous Capone's decadent and death-plagued lifestyle. Another aspect of these
"treacly" scenes that most critics failed to note, was the fact that after
nearly every one of them, there is an abrupt cut to a scene containing an act of savage
violence, i.e. Oscar's murder in the elevator (did someone say elevator?!), and Capone's
banquet/batting practice on an unfortunatly inept associate's head. Therefore, taken as a
whole, they are illustrative of De Palma's meta-cinematic tropes, as well as of his
satirical counterbalancing of extremely divergent situations.
The film's action setpieces, as noted earlier, are, as always a De Palma strong suit, and
are almost too numerous and abundantly overflowing with invention and aplomb, to detail
here. I could never in the space allotted here do anything approaching justice to the
legendary Union Station staircase shootout that evokes Eisenstein's silent classic
POTEMKIN, so I won't even try. My partner in crime Carl has done yeoman work
deconstructing this sequence bit by bit, you can find his extensive analysis by clicking here. I'll just state with admiration that this was a
sequence De Palma literally developed out of thin air when the originally scripted climax,
set to take place on a moving train, was nixed by the studio as the film began to go over
budget. He pulled off a similar trick a few years later on CARLITO'S WAY, and the level of
skill, invention and sheer cinematic genius on display in both sequences is so over and
above the capabilities of any other working director that comparisons seem unfair in the
extreme.
I must also single out that glorious sequence detailing the interception of a shipment of
illicit booze set on the Canadian border, when this urbane gangster film suddenly and
miraculously transforms itself into a rousing western! Men on horseback dot the horizon,
jagged mountain cliffs give way to a slate blue sky, a call to arms sets the cavalry in
motion commencing a wild and woolly shoot-out that in it's breadth, scale, rowdy humor,
and bursts of sudden, and deadly, violence is worthy of Raoul Walsh at his very best.
Absolutely incredible.
Finally, a word about Art Linson. He was the film's producer, the man who hired David
Mamet to write it, and Brian De Palma to direct it. After years of struggling to make a
name for himself in Hollywood, this was his first big production, and he was justifiably
proud of the finished film (and just as justifiably outraged, when aside from Connery's
nomination, the film was unaccountably shut out of all the other major Oscar categories).
He subsequently went on to produce De Palma's harrowing masterpiece CASUALTIES OF WAR in
1989, and the two men stayed quite friendly for awhile after that, although to date they
have not worked together again. A real pity, as Linson seems to be the kind of sympathetic
yet strong willed producer that brings out the best in De Palma, Like Ed Pressman, George
Litto, Frank Yablans, and Martin Bregman before him, Linson had complete faith in De
Palma's ability to successfully pull off a film with the scope and the magnitude of THE
UNTOUCHABLES.
The faith shone by all of these men has resulted in Brian De Palma making some of the
greatest American movies of of the past quarter century. It is a list of films that
denotes personal artistic triumph in the face of daunting obstacles, and in most cases
great popular success as well. A list that includes SISTERS, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, THE
FURY, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, SCARFACE, CARLITO'S WAY, CASUALTIES OF WAR, and yes
Virginia, even THE UNTOUCHABLES.
T o n y
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