Al Capone

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

Al Capone (Richard Wilson, 1959) No fortune was ever made without a little larceny. That's the way I first heard it. But, the quote (attributed to Balzac) is "The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a forgotten crime, because it was properly done."

 

Okay, a little touch of pretension to lead off a review of this cheap B-movie made around the time the movie market was starting to be overrun by gangster pictures, which had previously had their hey-day in the pre-Code early 1930's. The Code stated that criminals were not to be glorified, and certainly not mentioned by name—Howard Hawks had made Scarface in 1932, but the titular character played by Paul Muni was named Tony Camonte—not Al Capone (despite the "nickname" association). When Breen and the Hays Code cracked down on the mob in movies there had been one exception, the 1945 low-budget film Dillinger. 

But, as the Production Code was being attacked from all fronts, the smaller studios and production companies took chances on the criminal element as a box-office draw. The first script for Al Capone was rejected by the PCA, as "glorification" of Capone, without a "counter-balancing good" and "an overemphasis on violence and slaughter." A toned-down draft was subsequently submitted and accepted, and although J. Edgar Hoover would grumble about it (and the other gangster-themed films throughout the late 1950's-early 1960's), the mobs were taking over the screens.

It must have been tough not to "glorify" Capone, as he steeped himself in glorification; if there was an American oligarch of crime, it was Al Capone. The movie plays fast and loose with the facts—yeah, Capone started in New York, but the picture starts with him (played at high volume by Rod Steiger) working as a bodyguard for Johnny Torrio (Nehemiah Persoff), who runs an "emporium" specializing in "booze, gambling, and broads"—the movie glosses over the fact that Capone was merely 20 years old, already married with a kid (they're never mentioned). Capone thinks Torrio too soft and lacks ambition, but a meeting with higher-up "Big Jim" Colosimo (Joe De Santis) brings him a mentor more in line with how he'd want to handle things. And Colosimo knows Caruso. That's more like it.

With Prohibition, Capone devizes ways to keep the booze flowing and the money coming in, but his bosses aren't as keen to taking chances and challenging the turf of their rivals. Capone eliminates the roadblocks and intimdates his foes, all the time keeping control of politicians and paying off the police...except for Sgt. Schaeffer (James Gregory), who eventually becomes Captain and makes Capone his personal mission. Capone lives large and fairly untouched. But it isn't until the St. Valentine's Day massacre that Capone starts to feel any pressure, plus his relationship with the wife of one of his victims doesn't go smoothly, as well.

Some of it's true. Some of it is borrowed from Shakespeare—director Richard Wilson had worked on Welles' version of Macbeth—and it's all staged on back-lots and made-for-television angles on the cheap...as most of the product of these independent gangland films were. Still, one gets a sense of time and place, even if it sometimes feels like it's in a bubble. And Steiger is a roaring gorilla throughout, not afraid to rattle the balcony seats or bust a blood vessel. There are times when you want to laugh, but then Steiger will do something with just an eye-flick that lets you in that his gangster in not just all sound and fury, but a show-man and strategist as well. He's a combination of adult and child, with a habit of murderous tantrums. It would be an understatement to call it a bravura performance, and it comes perilously close to prosciutto. 

It's not a great film, but it is "properly done." Balzac would have been proud.