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Cinematic Analysis, Second Quarter

The Untouchables, a 1987 film directed by Brian De Palma, tells the story of Eliot Ness, a
Special Agent of the Treasury Department, and his quest to bring down notorious crime boss
Al Capone in 1930s Prohibition Era Chicago. Ness arrives in Chicago as a young, honest agent
who states he'll stop Capone and "the flow of illegal liquor and the violence it creates" by
using his power within the law. But throughout the course of the hunt, Ness learns that in
order to bring justice, he must become ruthless himself.
After getting an incorrect tip-off from the bribed chief-of-police about an illegal liquor
shipment, Ness decides he can't rely on the Chicago Police Department and decides to change
his strategy. He recruits Jim Malone, a streetwise but honest Irish cop to help him. At first,
Malone is hesitant, but after telling Ness that the best way to get Capone is to be just as
merciless as he is, Malone agrees to assist Ness and they create a small team to take on the
gangsters. Since corruption is everywhere, Malone tells Ness to "trust no one" and takes Ness
to the Police Academy, where they find George Stone, the best marksman in his class. Malone
is initially doubtful of Stone, but he and Ness are won over by Stone's confidence under
pressure and by how well he shoots. The final addition to the team is Oscar Wallace, an
accountant from the Treasury who believes they can put Capone in jail for tax evasion if they
fail to get him to admit to anything else.
Malone constantly asks Ness, "What are you prepared to do?" The teams first raid is in
broad daylight on a post office where Capone stores his illegal liquor. The raid goes perfectly,
giving Ness confidence and angering Capone, who kills the man who was managing the
storeroom. When Malone and Stone discover that a great shipment of illegal liquor is coming
from Canada, the team stops the shipment at the Canadian border and Ness shoots to death
one of Capone's gang, the first time he kills someone. Capones bookkeeper is captured in the
raid and refuses to cooperate with Ness, but after some violent convincing from Malone, he
agrees to tell all in court about Capone's business. On their way into protective custody,
however, the bookkeeper and Wallace are killed by Frank Netti, Capones assassin. Malone
asks Ness to delay the judge so that he can find Capones other bookkeeper, Walter Payne.

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Although he gets the information about Payne's location, Malone is murdered by Netti and his
men. When Capones men scheme to move Payne to a different location, their plan is
interrupted by Ness and Stone who pull off an unimaginable shoot-out in a train station,
saving a baby with one hand while shooting Payne's protector with the other. With their new
witness on the stand telling all, Capone goes to trial, is convicted, and it sentenced to jail for
11 years.

The Prohibition Era (1920s - early 1930s) in America was an era of violence, illegal
alcohol shipping and sales, underground empires, and gangs fighting for control of the
empire. Fights between rival gangsters selling alcohol broke out constantly in cities, and
people were brutally murdered out on the streets, in public places, and even in their homes.
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919, prohibited " . . . the
manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof
into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory . . . " (United States
Constitution, 18th Amendment). The Prohibition Movement to stop the sale of alcoholic
beverages was "largely driven by women -- women who had seen husbands, brothers, and
fathers destroyed by drink, their weekly paychecks washed away, their children gone
hungry" (Perry, 22). The Volstead Act went into effect in 1920, which reinforced the 18 th
Amendment and banned all liquor since people thought that "removing the temptation [to
drink] . . . would cause the desire to fade away" (Perry, 23).
Americans, however, continued to drink liquor through the business of bootleggers
such as George Remus, a criminal defense attorney who moved to Cincinnati in 1920 and
became the Rockefeller of the liquor industry; Roy Olmstead, a Seattle police lieutenant who
was known as the King of the Puget Sound Bootleggers; and Bill McCoy, a Florida sailor
who sailed liquor from the Bahamas to New England (Eig, 146). And there was Al Capone,
the infamous leader of the underground liquor empire of Chicago.
Capone was a notorious mob boss who rose to power by working his way up from kid
gangs in New York and working for Frankie Yale in Brooklyn to working for Chicago crime
leader John The Fox Torrio before taking over the operation himself. Capone had many

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hideouts in Chicago, including The Lexington Hotel, which was featured in The Untouchables
as Capone's headquarters (Chicago Historical Society). Capone controlled a network of
informants that included newsboys and bribed police officers. He was known for being a
notorious killer, his most famous killing being the St. Valentines Day Massacre of 1929,
where six members of George Bugs Morans gang and one other person were killed by
members of Capones gang dressed as police officers.
Capone was the most powerful gang leader in the 1930s and Public Enemy Number
One on Chicagos most wanted list. In case prohibition got overturned, he expanded his
vast empire to include labor unions and he even considered taking over the dairy business
since more people were buying milk than alcohol at the time. The government had been
trying for two years to put Capone behind bars for murder, gun charges, and bootlegging,
but on June 5, 1931, there was enough evidence gathered by Eliot Ness and his team to
charge him with income tax evasion on 22 occasions. It was still a hard case to win because
he had no bank accounts, paid for everything in cash, and this only property was a house in
Florida bought under his wifes name. His trial lasted for ten days before he was found guilty
on eighteen of the cases of tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison on
October 24, 1931. Before the trial, Capone had either bribed or threatened the majority of
the jury and thought he was going to get away with everything, but the judge found out at
the last minute and switched to a new group of jurors. Al Capones sentence was the
toughest sentence ever given for tax evasion. He spent his eleven years in Atlanta, the
harshest federal penitentiary, but was sent to Alcatraz after it was discovered that he was
receiving special privileges including a mirror, rugs, and a typewriter.
Eliot Ness, born in Chicago on April 19, 1902, was the Special Agent in Charge during
the hunt for Al Capone. Ness started working for the U.S. Treasury Departments Bureau of
Prohibition, which was located in Chicago, in 1927. He was recommended for the job by his
brother-in-law Alexander Jamie, an agent for the Bureau of Investigation who worked in the
Bureau of Prohibition. The first time he was recommended, he did not get the job. He was
fiercely determined and the second time he was a candidate, he got the job, beause

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"Whatever caught his interest, he became determined to win at it, to be the best" (Perry 29).
This determination was shown when he tracked and caught Capone.
Though the movie shows that Ness personally chooses the men who would later be
known as The Untouchables, Ness really didnt have much to do with the selections. In
actuality, "a handful of agents received orders to report to U. S. District Attorney Johnson for
'temporary detail on special work' " in November of 1930, while Ness did not work for
Johnson until December 8, 1930 (Perry 52). The writers and director of the film changed
that part of the story to make things more dramatic.
The cinematographic techniques used in The Untouchables create a mood of danger,
violence, power and drama. In the opening shot of the film, the audience is looking down
from above into an elaborate room where a man is getting a shave and a manicure while
being interviewed by reporters; a bodyguard is standing next to him and four more are
guarding the door. Based on the people in the room, the audience can guess that the man is
one of great power. When the camera pans downward toward the man from above, the
shaving towel comes off his face, and the man is revealed to be the one and only Al Capone.
He is hiding in plain sight, a wanted gangster who jokes with newspaper writers. The room
is shown to be in the Lexington Hotel, where later in the film Ness confronts Capone on the
stairs leading down to the lobby. The camera angle shows Capone at the top of the grand
staircase, causing Ness to look up at the notorious Chicago gang leader as if he is a powerful
god. At the end of the film during the trial, when Ness throws Netti off the roof as revenge
for killing Malone, the same camera angle this time looks up at Ness from the ground, as he
now has the power over Capone.
In a landscape scene later in the film, when Ness and his team intercept the
shipment of liquor coming from Canada, they are helped by the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police and the officers are all on horseback on top of a ridge, looking down at the bridge
waiting for the liquor trucks. As the camera scans the beautiful mountains and pans up
dramatically to the ridge, the men appear to look like cowboys. This analogy is further made
when The Untouchables are charging across the field toward the bridge at full speed with
their guns blazing, seeming like outlaws. This scene is one of the most dramatic from the

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film, second to the shootout at the train station near the end of the film. This scene, where
Ness has to choose between shooting one of Capones men or saving a baby as a carriage
rolls down the stairs, is filmed in slow motion, heightening the suspense. It turns out that
this scene is director Brian De Palma's tribute to the iconic Odessa steps scene from the
1925 movie Battleship Potemkin, a scene considered one of the greatest scenes in film
history (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Another spectacular scene is the long, single shot at Malones apartment that is
filmed as if the audience is seeing everything from the point of view of the assassin as he
follows Malones steps around the house, crawls in through the window, and walks through
the apartment looking for Malone. The single shot stops when the gangster is confronted by
Malone and now the audience is placed at an angle where they can see both men, but the
camera turns revealing the face of the gangster. Then when Malone is shot by Frank Netti
and crawling through his apartment leaving a bloody trail as he is dying, the scene keeps
switching between Al Capone watching the tragic opera and Malones real life tragedy, with
the song from the opera playing in the background. The musical score accompanying the
film, composed by Ennio Morricone, is suspenseful and enhances the action seen on the
screen.

Works Cited
Eig, Johnathan. Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured Americas Most Wanted Gangster.
New York, Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Perry, Douglas. Eliot Ness: The Rise and Fall of An American Hero. New York, Penguin Group,
2014.
Al Capone." Ed. The Chicago Historical Society. Web. 28 November 2014.
http://www.chicagohs.org/history/capone.html
Prohibition. Ed. Ken Burns. WETA. Web. 29 November 2014.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/

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"The 18th Amendment," The National Constitution Center. Web. 29 November 2014.
http://constitutioncenter.org/constitution/the-amendments/amendment-18-liquorabolished
"Battleship Potemkin." Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 30 November 2014.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/472603/Battleship-Potemkin