Brian De Palma is a great director when it comes to living out every single moment of a story. With his camera he prefers to observe figures that observe figures – because something could happen at any moment incredibly exciting happen. He ensures maximum tension using the simplest means.
He achieved this particularly impressively in The Untouchables. The crime film with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro takes you to Chicago in the 1930s, where the… Gangster boss Al Capone is up to mischief. A group of intrepid agents want to stop him.
In The Untouchables, Brian De Palma delivers 10 of the most exciting minutes in film history
Costner takes on the role of Eliot Ness, who reveals himself to be the leader of the group. The Treasury agent does everything he can to put Capone behind bars. There is a big shootout in the train station Chicago Union Station takes place and provides ten of the most nerve-wracking minutes in film history.
You can watch The Untouchables sequence here:
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Everything in this sequence signals that something really bad is about to happen. However, De Palma is hesitant about the moment of escalation until the last second. The cut is his most important ally: before a single weapon is drawn, we know everything that is moving in the station.
Nervous looks at the clock, men in long coats and that Stroller with the crying baby, not to mention the music that drives you crazy: De Palma uses every opportunity to make the tension unbearable. And then the stroller has to be carried up the stairs – unbelievable!
Without Battleship Potemkin, the stroller stairs scene in The Untouchables would never have happened
A masterpiece of film history served as the blueprint for this sequence: Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin from 1925. Here too, the film’s editing, a large staircase and a helpless baby carriage play a crucial role in a key sequence additional drama to rent.
This is how Eisenstein staged the stairs and the stroller:
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Eisenstein lets the stroller roll down the steps of the stairs to calm the panic just before Odessa port massacre to illustrate. It is the most famous sequence from the silent film classic and is still regularly quoted today. Most recently, in Mission: Impossible 7 – Dead Reckoning Part One, a stroller was discovered during the chase in Rome on the Spanish Steps.
When is The Untouchables on TV?
The Untouchables runs on September 27, 2023 at 11:15 p.m. on ZDFneo. The film is shown without commercial breaks and runs until 1:05 a.m. If you don’t want to stay up that long, you can alternatively watch it with a streaming subscription on Paramount+.
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