voacor

I saw this recently on TCM and was quite impressed. This film came before the better known gangster movies of that era-- "Little Caesar," "Public Enemy," and, the greatest of them all-- "Scarface." It was also made at a time when sound recording technology for motion pictures was very new and still in development. The first talkie gangster movie, which happened to be the first all-talkie movie, was "Lights of New York," made in 1928. In that film the equipment was so clunky that the actors had to speak loud and slow and stay close to the microphone. By 1931, several improvements had come along, but it was still a difficult technical achievement to make a film like this.

There is a scene towards the beginning where Ralph Belamy, who does a great job as a sinister hood, fires a tommy-gun in a night club and kills a guy. Then, he and his cohorts run out and jump in a car. The rival gang pursues them, firing their own tommy-gun. Finally, the rivals crash. But during the chase scene, we are taken through city streets, with the cars running fast and the machine guns blazing. Granted, this was done much better a year or so later in "Scarface," but this film set the precedent.

The film is also worth seeing for the Clark Gable role. He shows the charm that made him a star. Harlow is also great as the moll. For a film made that long ago-- at the very beginning of the sound era-- it is well worth viewing whenever it appears again on Turner or any other channel.

I watched these shows as a kid and I always loved it when Bruce Gordon was on playing Frank Nitti in his dark pinstriped suit. His voice, his sneer, his general bearing all told you this guy was the real boss.

He was in the first show, "The Empty Chair," and had a great scene firing a Tommy gun into a couple of associates in a barber shop. But most of the time he was the big man chomping a cigar in his office and ordering someone else to "knock him off." I later saw photos of the real Frank Nitti, who, of course, looked nothing like Bruce Gordon. The whole series was a fantasy approach to the Prohibition era, bearing no more resemblance to Chicago in the 1930's than most westerns do to the area west of the Mississippi in the later part of the 19th century. Accepting it as such, "The Untouchables" was a great series and a lot of fun to watch.

I loved this movie from the start. After seeing it in a theater, I caught it every time it played on TV and eventually bought the VHS and then the DVD. This film does what all great films should do-- it creates a world and lets you come in and live there for awhile. Each character is so strongly drawn that you really feel you know them. The story is almost irrelevant. You just go along for the ride (on a bicycle, of course)and observe human nature. The Midwest setting is also a bonus. It is nice to see a film set in Indiana rather than California or New York.

The father-son relationship is revealing and comical without being trite. The buddies are like the guys you may have grown up with, flawed and somewhat stupid at times, but loyal and goodhearted. I don't want to say too much about the story because you need to just sit back and get into it on your own. You may end up buying your own copy, too.