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The joke on Capone's fall is subsequently savored by De Palma in The Untouchables. "A guy kills hundreds of people a year, and three bookkeepers go chasing for income tax." The Big Fellow runs The Syndicate, intimidation is their main tool, the paper trail is followed by the tenacious U.S. Treasury agent (Glenn Ford). The meeting at the movie theater pans from the projector's beam to the informant munching popcorn in close-up, moments later he's a corpse on the sidewalk. "A lesson to pigeons: Don't fly too high." Raids are left to the police in montages, the agent's job is to study signatures and glare at unlawful luxury, he's "either a very honest man or a very stupid one" in the eyes of the smiling fixer (Barry Kelley). Joseph H. Lewis in rivalry with Mann's T-Men, the "documentary-style" crime drama that's actually a fountain of expressionism. Deep-focus arrangements reign, a Sternbergian dissolve sutures the protagonist's wife (Nina Foch) stashed away from peril to heroic pencil-pushers in the dingy office. An elevated angle introduces the burlesque house with shadows dancing around the orchestra pit, the showgirl (Kay Medford) talks gain and risk with the gangland accountant (Anthony Caruso). "Ten per cent of three million bucks." "Ten per cent of a bullet in the head." (His rubout in a teeming street market is filmed with Rossellini's Roma, città aperta in the back of the mind.) The courthouse receives the findings, a professional's ultimate reward is to leave the profession. "If anybody cared, men like my client couldn't exist." Lang ramps the intensity and blurs the divides in The Big Heat, so does Lewis in The Big Combo. With James Whitmore, David Bauer, Frank Tweddell, Howard St. John, John Hamilton, Leo Penn, Angela Clarke, and Esther Minciotti. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |