Absolute vanity for a vain cause

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2008)

The film came long after the 1960s series and it was able to improve the discourse a lot from pure police and gangster violence and counter violence and counter counter violence to some kind of calmer and sounder vision of prohibition. The least we can say is the whole case was absurd. Absurd because prohibition was an idiotic policy and in 1931 it was on the very verge of being abrogated, nullified and voided. Absurd because they could never get Al Capone for his crimes since he never did anything himself but only through and via other people. Absurd because even tax evasion was nearly derailed by bribes to the members of the jury, to the judge probably and many other people. But it is also true that this famous case managed to make gangsters and the mafia think twice and start moving to legal operations for their own gangs and abandoning illegal operations to the street gangs, those they did not even try to control. It was also before the time of street gangs, mainly held and controlled by the Blacks and the Latinos, which was supposed to happen after WW2 with heroin and cocaine. The film here shows how fragile and brittle the police is when confronted to that crime. Apart from shooting first they have little moral certainty to hold in front of heavy corruption and hefty bribes. The film shows how these battle are necessarily in public places and they become some kinds of street war and there have to be collateral victims in the public. This is emphasized by the pram and baby scene, a scene borrowed from Eisenstein and transposed in that context with great art, though the meaning is a lot triter than Eisenstein's. On the Soviet side a baby in the middle of a real war act from the political power in place against some demonstrators who have to be eliminated by bleeding them to death. On the US side a baby in the middle of two shooting camps transforming a central station into a shooting gallery with cops on one side and criminals on the other. And what's more in a battle that will come to an end incessantly by political decision. The law was on the side of criminal absurdity. In Eisenstein the law was on the side of anti-historical repression. And in front of the law Eisenstein had romantic revolutionaries who will eventually win a few years later whereas the Untouchables had a band of criminal gangsters whose business was to make money by illegally importing and selling alcohol. In fact the whole value is in the punch line. Roosevelt has won and prohibition is out, what will you do Mr. Ness? I guess I'll get a drink. That's just the point. A battle that should never have come up if the bad policy that brought it up had not been adopted by a bunch of bigots.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines