Al Capone

Al Capone (1959) is a solid biopic of America's most famous gangster, well-portrayed by a dynamic, pleasingly-hammy Rod Steiger. Just recently released on DVD, it's sure to find an appreciative audience among gangster fans.

Al Capone (Rod Steiger) is a small-time New York hood brought in by Chicago mob boss Big Jim Collosimo (Joe Di Santis) to help with his bootlegging racket. The ruthlessly ambitious Capone convinces underboss Johnny Torrio (Nehemiah Persoff) to do away with Big Jim, sparking off a long and bloody gang war between Capone, Torrio and the North Side gang of Dion O'Bannion (Robert Gist), Hymie Weiss (Lewis Charles) and Bugs Moran (Murvyn Vye). As Chicago descends into all-out war, Capone romances Maureen (Fay Spain), the pretty wife of one of his victims. After bumping off a heretofore friendly reporter (Martin Balsam), Capone's notoriety finally catches up with him, with straight-arrow cop Schaffer (James Gregory) teaming with the Feds to bring Capone to justice.

Al Capone is a perfect figure for the American gangster genre, with his immigrant roots, meteoric rise, controlling Chicago to a degree that no mobster has ever really held sway, and his rapid, inglorious fall. He had already "inspired" Howard Hawks's heavily-fictionalized Scarface (1932), in a time when few gangsters were directly portrayed on screen, and was the bad guy on the iconic TV series The Untouchables. In the late '50s, as part of a wave of real-life gangster biopics (The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, King of the Roaring Twenties), former Orson Welles acolyte Richard Wilson does a fine job bringing "Scarface"'s true story to life.

Not the last word on historical accuracy, Al Capone nonetheless gets most of the basic facts right. Capone's very-Italian gang are contrasted with the ethnically-heterogenous South Siders - the Irish O'Bannion and Moran, the Polish Weiss - in a turf war between immigrants. The film effectively shows Capone's rise to near-absolute power, controlling the city's booze, establishing a protection racket, and getting city hall, the cops and the press on his side through bribes and bullets; honest men like Schaffer are left powerless or forced to cut deals. He grows so powerful, indeed, that only his own overreaching brings him down.

The movie overstates its case a bit by claiming Al Capone laid the foundation for the modern Mafia (not strictly true), and the hectoring narration grows tiresome in spots. The role of the Treasury Department and IRS in bringing Capone to heel is virtually ignored, with Schaffer becoming a home-grown Elliot Ness surrogate. The biggest invention, of course, is Capone's melodramatic relationship with his wife. But is mostly a solid, straightforward portrayal of its protagonist and his times.

Wilson's direction is pretty straightforward, but the movie scores some style points through Lucien Ballard's moody deep-focus photography and Walter Hannemann's creative editing. Three years before Lawrence of Arabia, a key scene in Al Capone features a striking match cut. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre has been staged many times - including in that same year's Some Like It Hot - but Wilson's version, with an impressive tracking shot and angles replicating post-massacre photographs, outdoes them all. There are a number of bits - Capone's confrontation with his wife, his gracious dinner gesture to Schaffer - which may have inspired later gangster pics, or maybe these were already genre tropes.

Rod Steiger is superb. His oft-hammy acting style suits Capone's capricious nature, boisterous sense of humor and volcanic temper perfectly, and gives easily the best portrayal of the iconic gangster. The supporting cast is mostly good. Martin Balsam (Little Big Man) gets an excellent part as Al's ill-fated reporter buddy; Fay Spain (The Godfather, Part II) does well in her thankless part. James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate) makes a suitably righteous adversary for Capone.

Thankfully, Al Capone's recent video release (and TCM screening) will allow more viewers to see it. It really is a fine film and one of the big-screen's best depictions of a real-life Mob boss.