Al Capone

Like so many mid-century biographical films, Al Capone marches through the man's life, giving equal weight to each way-point. It also fails miserably by providing no psychological or historical context for how he became one of crime's most notorious characters. In fact, the film succeeds in white-washing this killer. He woos the widow of one of his victims. He repeatedly makes the point that he's never been convicted of any crime. People die, but there is no depiction of Capone's ruthless, brutal side. Rod Steiger in the title role does an admirable job with the shallow script, but this is not enough to make the film worth watching. Oddly, there's no mention of Elliot Ness and when it comes to summing up Capone's end, we're told he died of "an incurable disease." What, audiences in 1959 couldn't handle the word "syphilis"?

Many actors have portrayed Capone over the years. It's virtually a "cottage industry," guaranteeing that yet another Capone flick will hit the screens before the collective audience has quite recovered from its yawn at the last one. And yet, for me, no one has ever come quite so close to nailing the role as Rod Steiger in this 1959 black-and-white low-budget effort.

As a matter of fact, using the term "low-budget" does this film a disservice, calling to mind as it does the run-of-the-mill output of producer/distributor Allied Artists (usually on the scale of "Attack Of The 50-Foot Mummified Woman Meets Godzilla's Teenage Werewolf Son"). For this film, however, the studio assembled a strong acting ensemble which includes Martin Balsam, Nehemiah Persoff, Murvyn Vye, and James Gregory, all of whom deliver standout performances.

Yet it's Steiger whose performance holds this film together. His Capone is a monster whose mood swings defy the term "mercurial," yet his psychopathy seems somehow strangely -- disturbingly -- human. You can sense the demons deep within him, and how they drive him, but you're never allowed to glimpse them, not even momentarily, lest you lose sight of the fact that this man truly is a monster. Eerily compelling, even hypnotic (particularly as he woos -- and wins! -- the widow of a cop he's previously murdered), Steiger invests his characterization with the bravura of the opera which the real-life Capone professed to admire. Alternately wheedling and bullying, bellicose and scheming, he assumes a larger-than-life mythos which resonates all the more uncomfortably due to a sense of plausibility, the feeling that such men do continue to exist among us.

The storyline itself is more or less factual, save for Gregory's character (which isn't even really a composite of any particular real-life law enforcement personnel), as well as a decision to re-name Balsam's character rather than use the identity of the real-life Jake Lingle, upon whom the character is based. Certain incidents have been fictionalized as to the way they happened, but that's to be expected in the interest of dramatic effect.

Overall, the film achieves an almost documentary effect. Steiger's performance makes it a very chilling documentary, indeed.

This 1959 picture is yet another cinematic retelling of the life of mobster Al Capone, and is better than most I've seen. Rod Steiger as Big Al seems miscast at first but wins me over in the end. Steiger was a born ham, but a fine actor for all his Methodish mannerisms, and has moments in the movie in which he's almost hypnotically effective. Yes, it's a performance, I kept on telling myself, but so was Capone himself. Over the top, perhaps, but Capone was himself more than a little touched, and Steiger nails this aspect of Capone to perfection, and is more effective in capturing the big guy's capriciousness than Robinson or Muni before him. Steiger's Capone isn't merely a gangster, he's a man possessed.

Director Richard Wilson's keeps this fairly modestly budgeted film moving at a fast pace, and it's never boring. In supporting roles, Fay Spain, Martin Balasm, James Gregory and Nehemiah Persoff are all effective. The black and white of this film evokes the late fifties more than the roaring twenties, and the movie at times feels a little like an episode of The Untouchables, at other times like Some Like It Hot. The Jazz Age was itself hot as the Eisenhower era was drawing to a close. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels were coming back into vogue. O'Neill revivals on and off-Broadway were becoming commonplace. Al Capone captures this nostalgic mood, but really makes me nostalgic for the fifties more than for the twenties, for a time when fairly recent history could still be viewed as larger than life, the stuff of serious art and contemplation, not just fashionable nostalgia. Al Capone the movie is more nostalgia than serious art, but it touches on important issues, concerning violence, friendship, the role of government and the press as they pertain to and often collude with the criminal element, that still resonate today.

Rod Steiger is excellent as the famed Italian-American gangster Al Capone. When you see him speaking Italian and getting hurt feelings when someone disrespects him, it makes you wonder (if you haven't already) why Marlon Brando was cast as the titular role in The Godfather, when so many other actors would have done a better job. Rod is so great in this role, it dampens others who have subsequently played Capone. Why was it necessary to keep making biopics when Scarface (the original) and Al Capone were so well-acted?

In the supporting cast, you'll see Martin Balsam, James Gregory, and Nehemiah Persoff. There's a pretty big focus on Capone's Achille's heel: Fay Spain. He's an enormously powerful man who gets his way always, and yet he's completely vulnerable to Fay's affections. He brings her expensive presents and dresses her well, but when she still doesn't love him, he feels worthless and unappreciated. I didn't understand why he didn't just move on and get another mistress, but then again, people are often drawn to those who will hurt them.

If you like Rod Steiger, check out this lesser known drama. It's filmed in a very old, 1930s style to pay tribute to the gangster period. It probably wasn't a hit at the time because movies like Ben-Hur, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and North by Northwest were big spectacles in Technicolor and full of action. This is a black-and-white nostalgia piece that reminds viewers of Prohibition and the Great Depression. It's well-done, but it's definitely stylized.

Chicago in the 1920's: rife with political and police corruption and increasingly run by mobsters. The most famous of them undoubtedly was Al Capone. In this bio-pic, Capone is played very effectively by Rod Steiger. Steiger captured both the role and the man. Capone was a guy of humble origins, but was a bit of a contradiction: he had no education but a love for culture; he was a ruthless gangster but for the most part stayed legally "clean." Steiger captured both the ruthlessness and the culture with his portrayal. Based on actual photographs of Capone that I've seen, Steiger even looked the part. He was very impressive.

The movie basically traces Capone's career in crime from the time he arrives in Chicago in 1919 as a bodyguard to a local crime figure and takes it up to his conviction for income tax evasion of all things (it was the only crime they could ever actually pin on him) in 1931, with a very brief look at Capone in Alcatraz, and a voice-over explaining his last years before his death in 1947. Watching his rise was always interesting. A lot of this is fictional. James Gregory's character (the honest Chicago cop who commits himself and his entire career to bringing Capone down, and from whose perspective the story is told) didn't exist, and there's no portrayal of Capone's actual marriage; instead the movie focuses on a relationship he supposedly develops with a woman (Fay Spain) whose husband he had killed in the early part of his criminal career. The character of the newspaperman Keely (Martin Balsam) was based on a real figure, although the name was changed.

By the standards of the modern era of film-making, this is laughably clean. There are a lot of shootouts, but no blood ever appears on those who are shot and killed, and in general these gangsters are awfully polite! There's an extended look on the planning of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre (as Capone used his men to take out many of his rivals in Chicago while he stayed at his home in Florida) although the Massacre itself doesn't take very long and - again - isn't especially graphic.

This represents an interesting and believable (if not quite historically accurate) look at not only Capone but at the state of Chicago in the era and of the role that Prohibition played in promoting the rise of organized crime, and Steiger's performance alone makes this worth watching. (8/10)