Oh, sure, it’s impractical for a few reasons. I was just mentioning one of the potential benefits that hadn’t been brought up yet.
Hoover definitely was obsessed with capturing Capone. He had a weekly exercise with his cabinet and every week he’d ask of the Attorney General about their case against Capone. However, I don’t believe Hoover lived in Florida or stayed there during his presidency. He did have offices in Florida, but nowhere near where Capone lived.
In reality, Eliot Ness had nothing to do with Capone’s arrest, and the Untouchables were nothing special. Later Oscar Fraley wrote an account of Ness’s time in Chicago – somewhat exaggerated – and put it out with Ness’s name as co-author. Ness’s only contribution was to read the galleys.
Capone was convicted due to the work of Frank J. Wilson, who spent months going over Capone’s finances to prove he was underreporting his income.
Now, which movie would you rather see? The Untouchables as it was presented, or a movie showing Wilson and his aides poring over tax records and receipts? (“Look! On September 17, 1926, he spent $200 on champagne!” “Good work, Jenkins. We’ve got him now.”)
Accuracy is the great bugaboo when judging movies today. But accuracy always has to give way to the story. It makes people feel superior if they can catch something that’s wrong in a historical movie, but it usually shows the flaws of the critic, and not the movie.
Accuracy always should give way to a good story. Inglourous Basterds was hardly accurate, but it was still a great movie.
Says the guy who fancies himself a critic.
Having historical, easily verified inaccuracies, that don’t even affect the movie, doesn’t reveal the flaws in the critic. It reveals the flaws in the movie making system.
Inglourious Basterds doesn’t pretend to be a historical movie any more than Star Trek pretends to be an accurate representation of space flight. But the only things The Untouchables have in common with reality, chuck, is it features characters named Ness, Capone, Nitti and Chicago. The rest is fiction. But it pretends to be historically accurate.
Totally agree. If an historical event isn’t a good subject for an exciting movie, don’t screw with history - pick another subject. There is no excuse for changing history in major ways just to make a movie more exciting.
And there are ways to make an historical movie fun, exciting, scary or dramatic without changing history. For example, you can make a movie around a fictitious character who was on the periphery of the actual events but who is plausibly lost to history.
But I’m guessing there are now millions of people who believe that a jury was swapped, that Frank Nitti was thrown off a roof, etc.
I love The Untouchables as a movie. The shootout in the train station was a fantastic piece of filmmaking. It’s a great movie. But it does a terrible disservice to history.
RealityChuck:
Of course the main evidence came from the accounting side, but how did the accountants get any evidence of Capone’s income? Ness’s team disrupted the brewery business enough so Capone couldn’t afford his bribes, which is what made the local authorities look away and/or warn him if honest ones were getting too close.
Fraley of course concentrated on the more interesting side of the story, but he lays out just what Ness’s team’s role in the process was. To pretend Ness and the Untouchables were nothing special is not true.
There’s nothing wrong with the Untouchables except that it uses the names of real people and pretends to be telling a story that really happened. What’s the point of using the real names if you are not going to tell something approximating the real story? “Accuracy” is one thing, “massive fabrication” is another.
An absurd comparison. Inglourious Basterds was an obvious fantasy and counterfactual from the beginning. No one could suppose it was based on true events.
I don’t mind minor inaccuracies, or that shortcuts might be taken to tell the story, or that minor characters might be combined, or that some dramatic liberties might be taken. I do mind fabrications that subvert the actual original story.
Call me odd, but I expect a movie supposedly based on an autobiographical work to bear at least some resemblance to the book.
They could, but then there would be tons of “the director could have focused on real people making real decisions - why did they make a fake story” arguments. I know, I’ve argued your position here many a time.
cf, Titanic.
And the fact that it wasn’t Eliot Ness that brought down Capone.
Well, there IS that…
Same here. I treat it as pure fiction that happens to riff on some historical figures and just enjoy it for what it is.
BTW, if one has a spare 25 minutes or so, a guy named Nick Hodges does a pretty good job of summarizing the movie’s many deviations from history, following on from a lengthy recap of Prohibition for his (presumably international) audience.
Sorry, I intended just to quote the last line of Sam’s post.
according to the a&e biography, the only reason we really know who ness was is his boss thanked him by name when Capone was convicted because he did help stem the tide of a lot of rotgut and dangerous booze in Chicago and assisted in various investigations and wanted to give him some credit … and the papers puffed him and the squad up …
Have you read the book The Untouchables?