• Director(s):

    JEUDY (Patrick)

  • Producer(s):

    ARTE FRANCE, TEMPS NOIR

  • Territories:

    Worldwide.

  • Production year:

    2009

  • Language(s):

    German, English, French

  • Rights:

    NON-THEATRICAL, TV, VOD, DVD

Based on Al Capone's trial, following America's most famous killer was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax fraud (!), Patrick Jeudy retraces the criminal saga that gripped Chicago during Prohibition.

Although in January 1947, the public received the news of Al Capone's death with indifference, twenty years earlier he had ruled the worlds of gambling, liquor and sex. Nothing escaped the high-roller who built his mafia empire on brute force and corruption. Policemen, judges and journalists were among the many who ate out of the crime syndicate's hand, ensuring the boss's impunity. Until the day when the head of the Untouchables brigade, Eliot Ness, came on the scene. A struggle to death started between the two men.
But behind this dualistic story, which was a riot of armed fights and controlled skids, the film reveals the portrait of a still-wild America, torn between its founding myths and its deep aspirations to modernity. "Eliot Ness versus Al Capone" is part of a series of historical frescoes directed by Patrick Jeudy who, by portraying the filmed biography of mythical figures of the American legend (Marilyn Monroe, Nixon, Kennedy, Grace Kelly, Capa, Jackie Kennedy), affords a thoroughly modern view of what our American cousins reveal to us about ourselves.