Here endeth the lesson

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 2011)

"The camera lies all the time." – Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma directs "The Untouchables", a film which presents the flip side to his earlier gangster movie, "Scarface". So whilst "Scarface" was all about excess and unchecked consumption, the logic of capitalism taken to its grotesque extreme, "The Untouchables" is about Prohibition, regulation, control and the knights who maintain order.
And so the over-the-top badness of Al Pacino in "Scarface" ("Say goodbye to the bad guy!", "Bad guy coming through!") becomes actor Kevin Costner's ultra saintly performance as the squeaky clean Eliot Ness in "The Untouchables" ("Let's do some good!", "I'm a good cop!", "We must be pure!"). A boy scout with a badge, Ness is the ultimate straight-arrow. Where Pacino was associated with foreigners, outsiders, vulgarity, sex and drugs, Ness is an all American hero, a morally righteous G-man linked to religious iconography, a Madonna-like wife, righteous crusades, noble sacrifices, wild west motifs, Norman Rockwell imagery and is constantly shot from low angles so as to emphasise his near mythic, heroic stature.
There are other minor reversals – the man Pacino kills in Freedom Town becomes the henchman Ness kills at the end of "Untouchables", the little girl killed at the start of "Untouchables" becomes the little girls Pacino saves at the end of "Scarface" etc – but the major reversals occur toward the end of the film. Here, no one bats an eyelid when the super saintly Ness lies to a judge and commits murder to uphold Prohibition, a foolish law (which still exists in various forms today) which Ness abides to, not because it is worth enforcing (the film ends with Ness promising to take a drink), but because it is the Law.
All these actions flip "Scarface's" redemptive ending, in which crime-lord Tony Montana becomes disillusioned with excess and loses his empire after refusing both to corrupt the innocence of his sister and to murder two girls. For all his vices, Montana was a disillusioned hero. For all his charm, Ness is a hypocrite, one film serving up truths via disenchantment, the other lies via illusions. If capitalism operates by promising the unattainable absolute object whilst disguising the fact that it is the object's inaccessibility which fuels Desire, then it is "heroes" like Ness who bolster the American Dream by ensuring that Desire is always possible but prohibited.
Both films are derived from 1930s gangster flicks, but at times feel more like war movies (armoured trucks, assault rifles, high-tech surveillance). Like most war movies, "The Untouchables" message also appears to be that the ends justify the means. That our heroes commit crimes, but only that we may all live in peace. As Ness' world is one of crooked cops, dishonest judges, widespread corruption, and one in which power goes to the highest bidder, the audience not only accepts a little rule bending from our hero, but overlooks it completely.
Throughout the film, Ness wrestles with one question: can the rule of law be re-established by violating the law? His answer is no. When the grieving mother of a dead little girl tasks Ness with capturing crime-lord Al Capone, Ness nobly takes on this "righteous mission". He will do anything within the Law to maintain the Law, he says. It is only through a character called Malone (Sean Connery), that Ness begins to embrace more cutthroat methods. As Malone is linked to churches, Rosary beads and saints, we accept his schooling. The government – federal, state and local – is not bound to obey its own laws.
The film contains an extended sequence which takes place in Chicago's Union Station. Dismissed by many as being a "mere homage", this scene recalls Eisenstein's "Odessa Steps" sequence in "The Battleship Potempkin" for several reasons. Not only was "Potempkin" made during the time period in which "The Untouchables" is set, but both films are about battles for control, "Untouchables" the battle for capitalist control of "war torn" Chicago and "Potempkin" the Tsarist Regime's control of "Russia" in the wake of rebel dissidence.
Eisenstein's "Odessa Steps" sequence was an unashamed piece of political propaganda – one of cinema's greatest agitprop moments - designed to defame the Imperial Regime by showing Cossak soldiers ruthlessly slaughtering men, women and children on a public staircase. De Palma re-stages the sequence in small scale, but puts his heroes in the position of the Tsarist Regime. Both scenes are designed to expose the fact that regimes have no moral compunction and will do anything (or have their foot-soldiers do anything) to hold onto power and control. What De Palma's sequence does is retain the propagandistic function of Eistenstein, but filters it through an ironic light. Here, The G-men are elevated to heroic status, and our mythologization of them legitimizes their actions. Likewise, both scenes feature imperilled baby carriages, but whilst Eisenstein's was threatened by Cossacks, De Palma's represents the psychology of Ness. Symbollically recalling the grieving mother and the dead child, the menaced baby represents the point where two Ness' converge; innocence and violence, public duty and moral responsibility. This scene, and the audience, then sanctions everything Ness does later.
De Palma made "The Untouchables" after almost a decade of financial failure. A calculated crowd pleaser, the film then went on to become his biggest box office hit. The audience's love is disturbing, as the film is such a straight faced emulation of cheese-ball 30's pulp, no one reads it as a piece of pop-art propaganda, or in relation to "Potempkin's" anti-totalitarianism or even De Palma's early satires (Ness is the precursor to Tom Hanks' squeaky clean bastard in De Palma's "Bonfire").
8/10 - Aesthetically the film is gorgeous (filled with beautiful compositions, architecture, elegant camera-work and a great score by Ennio Moriconne), but its style is too "mainstream" for hardcore De Palma fans, and writer David Mamet's minimalism and sharp prose are wasted on a baroque visualist like De Palma.