I'm not sure that Rod Steiger comes across as very Italian in this movie. He wasn't really very good with dialects. And maybe he doesn't need to be too "Italian" anyway; Capone was born in Brooklyn, not Italy as he liked to claim. Steiger is a repulsive looking gangster here -- treacherous, sweaty, brutal, uncouth, and lecherous. Yet, I kind of like him. Steiger, I mean. Grew up hauling ice on the streets of Newark, New Jersey. Anybody who can get from there to an academy award has my vote.
Oh, sure, he can sometimes turn in a nicely measured performance, as in "On the Waterfront" and "The Pawnbroker" and "Doctor Zhivago." And sometimes he flails about, chewing the scenery to a frazzle, as he does here. But the exaggerration is curiously appropriate. The musical score cues us that this isn't all meant to be taken too seriously. And through the mask of all those wild gestures, verbal quirks, and method grimaces he does manage to project a fullsome ruthlessness. His boss, Johnny Torrio (Nehemia Persoff) promotes him to partner and when Capone asks why, Persoff turns to him, eyes filled with fear, and replies in a quivering voice, "Al, I want you standing next to me. I don't want you behind me no more." The two actors play off each other well. I've sometimes wondered if they reminisced about the scene they had together in "On the Waterfront." Persoff was the taxi driver in that famous scene, which I watched Elia Kazan filming in Hoboken as a kid. "On the Waterfront" was Martin Balsam's debut film too. He was morally upright there, whereas he is a likable reporter here but embodies moral terpitude, which is engaging as far as it goes, until he crosses Capone. Fay Spain, playing a woman whom Capone has turned into a widow, is exotic and sexy, but a limited acress. James Gregory is miscast as the straight police officer who is Capone's nemesis. I can't recall a single movie in which he appeared to be anything but a lying blowhard. But his character gets the job done. There are no "Untouchables" here. For all of the loathsome things that Capone did or instigated he spent only eleven years in prison for tax evasion. It wasn't easy time, true. When he refused to join in an uprising he was stabbed from behind by another inmate -- and this was Capone! He was released and allowed to spend the rest of his life in his Florida mansion. I guess we are supposed to take his slow death from syphilis as somehow a providentially imposed punishment, but lots of people had syphilis -- good and bad. Even Florence Nightingale died of syphilis.
Oh, sure, he can sometimes turn in a nicely measured performance, as in "On the Waterfront" and "The Pawnbroker" and "Doctor Zhivago." And sometimes he flails about, chewing the scenery to a frazzle, as he does here. But the exaggerration is curiously appropriate. The musical score cues us that this isn't all meant to be taken too seriously. And through the mask of all those wild gestures, verbal quirks, and method grimaces he does manage to project a fullsome ruthlessness. His boss, Johnny Torrio (Nehemia Persoff) promotes him to partner and when Capone asks why, Persoff turns to him, eyes filled with fear, and replies in a quivering voice, "Al, I want you standing next to me. I don't want you behind me no more." The two actors play off each other well. I've sometimes wondered if they reminisced about the scene they had together in "On the Waterfront." Persoff was the taxi driver in that famous scene, which I watched Elia Kazan filming in Hoboken as a kid. "On the Waterfront" was Martin Balsam's debut film too. He was morally upright there, whereas he is a likable reporter here but embodies moral terpitude, which is engaging as far as it goes, until he crosses Capone. Fay Spain, playing a woman whom Capone has turned into a widow, is exotic and sexy, but a limited acress. James Gregory is miscast as the straight police officer who is Capone's nemesis. I can't recall a single movie in which he appeared to be anything but a lying blowhard. But his character gets the job done. There are no "Untouchables" here. For all of the loathsome things that Capone did or instigated he spent only eleven years in prison for tax evasion. It wasn't easy time, true. When he refused to join in an uprising he was stabbed from behind by another inmate -- and this was Capone! He was released and allowed to spend the rest of his life in his Florida mansion. I guess we are supposed to take his slow death from syphilis as somehow a providentially imposed punishment, but lots of people had syphilis -- good and bad. Even Florence Nightingale died of syphilis.