The Impasse: The Cult Classic’s Best Scene Was a Trap for Al Pacino’s Character

In the final scene of Carlito’s Way, Brian De Palma turns Carlito’s last burst of freedom into a slow funeral march.

Ten years after the cult classic Scarface, Brian De Palma and Al Pacino reunite to deliver the no-less excellent Carlito’s Way. This time, there’s no ascent to power, but the “retirement” of a former drug dealer, Carlito Brigante, who tries to go straight after having squirreled away some money… but nothing goes as planned.

With relentless tragic force, the film gives Pacino one of his greatest performances and proves that De Palma is a genius of filmmaking, notably thanks to a masterful long take (a scene filmed without cuts in which the camera follows one or more characters uninterrupted).

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In 1974, Garrett Brown filed a patent for the steadicam, a system that attaches the camera to the operator’s body rather than to their arms. With a spring-based mechanism, it absorbs jolts and delivers a smoothness far superior to that of handheld or dolly-mounted cameras. Dozens of filmmakers have embraced it to craft sequences that have become iconic: the chase through the maze in The Shining, the opening of Boogie Nights… and one of the closing sequences of Carlito’s Way, which, while giving the illusion of total freedom, reminds us that Carlito is doomed from the film’s opening minutes.