All Hail Boardwalk Empire

HBO’s Atlantic City gangster drama ends its first season tonight—Allen Barra argues that its excellence is unrivaled in TV history, and has only seldom been achieved in film.

In the first episode of Boardwalk Empire, directed by Martin Scorsese, Atlantic City political boss “Nucky” Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi, pensively gazes into a fortuneteller’s parlor. A short time later, we see the reverse shot—Nucky staring through the door’s oval window as seen from the inside. The shot replicates the double burn insert popular in newspapers in the 1910s and 1920s where a photo of a famous person was set in a smaller frame against a larger background–you’ll remember the technique from the front page of a newspaper in Citizen Kane featuring pictures of Kane and his mistress and their “love nest.”

It’s an arcane reference but a key one. Boardwalk Empire, which closes out its first season this Sunday at 9 p.m., has gone for the top rung in terms of authenticity and much more often than not reaches it. Nothing quite like this HBO series has ever been produced on television, and only seldom in the movies. A comparison to The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II wouldn’t be misleading. Boardwalk Empire is about the children and grandchildren of mostly Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants and how they came together to create organized crime as a springboard to becoming what one of the mob’s giants, Meyer Lansky, once called “real Americans.”

....A crew of more than 300 constructed a 290-foot long boardwalk and, using an estimated 140 tons of steel, created hotels (including the legendary Ritz, the real Nucky’s favorite), shops, taffy parlors and photography studios at a cost in excess of $5 million. (The first episode alone cost nearly $18 million.)

"When was the last time you saw even a single hour biopic program on any recent inventor, physician, statesman or any other field? "

John Adams, Defiance, Invictus, Toussaint, Rescue Dawn, Freedom Writers, The Blind Side, Pope John Paul II, Cinderella Man, Coach Carter Valkyrie, Charlie Wilson's War, Glory Road, The Greatest Game Ever Played...

And those are only the movies that are in my personal library (although, I do have large movie collection), and I only went back to about 2005. I'm sure there are others.

I bet if I went and looked on Box Office Mojo, I could find PLENTY of biopics from the "Old Studio Days" that were made about unsavory characters, or at least characters that weren't a conventionally wholesome protagonist - Cleopatra comes to mind immediately. And, how many versions of that movie were made before Burton/Taylor?

I think Hollywood makes good movies. They just don't make enough good movies - the crap to excellence ratio is poor, at best. What's also telling, is as I look over the list of the movies I noted, I can't find one that would be described as a "blockbuster". Hollywood makes their biggest movies today for kids, because by-in-large, it's the kids who go to movies. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if "Saw V" outperformed everyone of the movies I noted (with possible exception, Blind Side).

Hollywood isn't the problem, it's a mirror to American society. If biopics on conventionally "good" people or feel-good movies sold well, they'd make more of them. They don't.

I will end by saying that this year, 2010 seems to be a remarkably poor year in the history of cinema, and probably only eclipses last year which was another poor year. There haven't been many quality movies of any genre, at all.

I thought it was a bit overpraised. My main issue with it is the kitchen-sink problem that often affects period pieces like this. You can’t just have gangsters, you must have Al Capone and Lucky Luciano and Meyer lansky. You can’t just have one of Nucky’s friends get taken by a conman, he has to be taken by Charles Ponzi. Warren Harding’s mistress! The Klan! Lynchings (even though there never were any lynchings in New Jersey). Every possible 1920 celebrity and headline must make an appearance.

Also, the “hey aren’t we Republicans corrupt” messages bug me. And all of the black people in Atlantic City vote unanimously Republican because Chalky tells them to, not because the Democrats at that time were ardent supporters of Jim Crow and the Klan.

"My main issue with it is the kitchen-sink problem that often affects period pieces like this."

I'll stipulate that the Pozi reference and the Harding mistress were gratuitous. But, I'm not sure I agree with the rest.

Factually, Enoch Johnson (the Nucki Thompson character) was a Republican, and he ran the Republican political machine of Atlantic City for almost two decades. I don't think Democrats come off unscathed, especially considering the most corrupt character on the show is the NJ Democrat Senator with whom Nucki clashes.

Democrats also are portrayed (correctly) as the people who are working hardest to keep the women from getting the vote.

I also don't think that the fictionalized story between Nucki and the other well-known gangsters of the era is over the top. In fact, they all were in contact, had business relationships, and occasionally went to war with each other. Enoch Johnson clearly helped put the "organized" in organized crime. The book upon which the series is based, goes into some detail about the great Mob convention/meeting that took place in Atlantic City and was hosted by Johnson. Everyone of the characters in the show, actually attended that meeting.

The book also details the patronage/payoffs between Johnson and members of all the ethnic communities, including the blacks. This is the single biggest tool Johnson used to consolidate his power. While Chalky is a fictionalized character, he's a composite of several black men who worked in Johnson's bootlegging operation. As the lynching episode pointed out, it wasn't done by the Klan, but by rival gangsters. It wasn't because of race, but because of booze.

The Klan did exist in NJ during the 1920s. That's not fiction. It had a robust presence throughout the state. Lynchings may not have happened (I don't know, so I'll take your word), church burning clearly did.

Johnson was the Richard Daley of his day. If one were to write a biopic about Daley, you can imagine every major political player of his generation would probably show up (as well as a fair share of criminals). Why? Because that's the kind of shadow Daley cast. Johnson was no different.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.