Le tueur de Chicago

Al Capone versus Eliot Ness--Evil versus Good--Darkness versus Light...

The late 'Fifties brought B&W television to its highest point and "The Untouchables" was a case in point. People have a way of forgetting that the series--with its graphic violence--was controversial in its own time.

Robert Stack(as Eliot Ness) was here the perfect film noir hero--tough, laconic and utterly loyal to his subordinates. Neville Brand, no slouch himself, lit up the screen as Al Capone--sadistic, as tough as Ness and totally without concern for his own people(or anyone else, for that matter).

The reconstruction of mood and ambiance in this movie(re-edited from the TV series) is flawless. The mythic world which you see here is one that psychologist Carl Jung would have approved of. It was the "world" in which my own Dad had grown up--as seen through a child's eyes.

But, as history, it is woefully wide of the mark. The real Eliot Ness left Federal service after a few short years and was much less moral and self-possessed than the character played by Robert Stack. The real Al Capone had a weakness for beautiful women which ultimately killed him.

While Ness put the Chicago Gangsters under financial pressure, an accountant from the IRS actually put this multiple murderer behind bars--for income tax evasion.

I saw this as a kid, with my Dad at my side. It made me feel that there is, in the end, no issue more important than simple justice. Since that time, like most folks, I've learned to live with moral ambiguity. But that's not all good news, by any means.

This was a HUGE TV EVENT when it first came on. Yes, it functioned as the pilot of the subsequent TV series, with Eliot Ness played by Robert Stack. But it was longer, and a lot better. Many epic scenes of tank-like trucks with snowplows on them BASHING through the gates of the warehouses where the bad guys brewed illegal beer. Then the feds would jump out of the truck and spray everybody with Tommy Gun fire. (Of course TV shows like this in the 1950s made America more than eager to do the same thing in third world countries--Korea, Guatemala, Vietnam, the mid-East --you name it). Neville Brand as Al Capone was not in the TV series, because he'd already been vanquished by Ness at the end of this TV movie. He was distinguished for his schtick in this film, of laughing and then turning angry and surly in a split second, as his henchmen mobsters sat around a banquet table trying to keep up with his mood swings, alternately laughing and glowering along with him. Bob Hope later did a satire of this scene on one of his TV specials--the laughing and glowering. It was pretty funny. I was a dorky pre-teen in the local Methodist Youth Fellowship when the most memorable scene of the film came on: --Ness had a sweet girlfriend in the movie, who pure as she was, didn't seem to wear a bra under her sweaters, all of which seemed to unbutton down the front. In the key scene, several hulking Italian-American criminals bash down the door to her single-woman's apartment, security chain and all, and then rip open her sweater and "admire" the merchandise. Pretty hot stuff for 1950s family-hour viewing! In the next scene she and Ness are getting married and Ness organizes a parade of Capone's confiscated beer trucks, to get back at him for feeling up his girlfriend, craven non-Anglo animal that he is. Now that's American justice! --Pretty good for the same company that brought us I LOVE LUCY for so many years. Anyway--if you want a TAPE of this movie, be sure it's the original film with Neville Brand, and not just episodes of the later TV show.-B2

I used to love this series growing up. But as I got older I knew most of it was false. No way was Ness going around slapping gangsters, and talking down to them. Ness wanted to be important again, so he wrote this mostly fictional account. The IRS brought Capone down, not Ness. Read the true story. All in all this was light entertainment.

"The Scarface Mob" is not a gangster film; that's what I claim puts it head and shoulders above all other anti-crime films. It's really about what motivates an Eliot Ness and what makes his sort of man different from the Al Capone's of this world. I have studied the era extensively; and those who called this "authentic-looking" Depression Era dramatized fiction have the case right; the direction by Phil Karlsen, as good as any director is at putting physical action on the screen, is very authentic. Nelson Riddle's jarring score and the great sets add much to the movie. Most of the acting, by stalwart Robert Stack, Keenan Wynn, Bruce Gordon and others is very good indeed. This is a story of the hardest sort to make-- a tale of an ethical man trying to bring down an evil one; it's the sort of story that many TV series have failed to carry off. In this feature-length film, scenes such as the harrowing setting of a wiretap in an alleyway by night, truckborne raids on breweries, a knife attack on Ness, nightclub scenes, Capone's return from serving a jail sentence to reestablish his rule over his cowed mobsters and many others are exceedingly memorable. The violence in the film is mostly honest, the camera-work and lighting amazing for a made-for-TV 1950's production. But the key to the film's extraordinary power is the keeping of context by Ness and his men--truly untouchable in a time when bribery was all-too-effective at corrupting many who had sworn to protect citizens from the Capones. It's hard to say enough nice things about such a memorable film experience.

Back in the good old days of television censorship, shows like THE UNTOUCHABLES were never allowed to be shown without first having passed the strict rules of censorship insisted upon by sponsors and ever-cautious studio executives. As history has shown us, eventually there was a backlash to such concerns. The end result? Well, such considerations are always subjective and many viewers today might wonder aloud how shows like THE SOPRANOS could ever have come to be in such an environment.

For better or for worse, things have changed. But those who might label shows like THE UNTOUCHABLES "naïve" had best be reminded that it took an awful lot of creativity to work around the limits of early television censorship to present programming as violent, hard-hitting and memorable as THE UNTOUCHABLES or, as we have it here: THE SCARFACE MOB.

THE SCARFACE MOB was the name of the two-part pilot for the Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse Anthology series on CBS. Desilu was the television production company created by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Together they were committed to the artistic growth as well as financial success of the medium. The same way they pushed the envelope in comedy with I LOVE LUCY no doubt inspired their attempts to do the same with drama. We'll never known the full extent of the battles that went on behind closed doors to finally get the green light from rival network ABC (after CBS passed) to go ahead with the weekly series of THE UNTOUCHABLES. Two factors must have come to mind in favour of producing the show. The series was based on fact and not too distant recent (though almost forgotten) history; and more importantly, each episode of THE UNTOUCHABLES ultimately represented a morality play with good triumphing over evil. Thus, with the inherent morality intact, THE SCARFACE MOB, with a lot of editing apparently, gave birth to the long-running popular program THE UNTOUCHABLES that proved over its four-season life span there was an audience for such violent fare-so long as the good guys won in the end.

Robert Stack (sounding like Gary Cooper's younger brother) stars as agent Eliot Ness, whose real-life exploits during Prohibition were largely forgotten by the time the series was made. Ness struggled financially and was almost penniless in his later years. He died in1957 of a heart attack at the mere age of 54 while working on his memoirs as a desperate means of generating some income. Stack was perfect for the part, though he was not first choice. That distinction went to Arnaz' friend, Van Johnson, whose agent made the fatal error of asking for too much money--$10,000 for each of the two-part episodes! Outraged, Arnaz withdrew the offer and called Stack, offering him the role. Stack accepted immediately and the rest is television history!

The real standout performance is Neville Brand as Al Capone, broad Italian accent and all. Combined with terrific atmosphere, a constant stream of bullets, beautiful women in '20s-era dresses and strongly delineated characters who are either black or white, good or bad, THE SCARFACE MOB sizzles with the promise of danger at every turn. Ambiguity and subtlety have no place in the world of THE SCARFACE MOB.