Scarface

A friend of mine was so incensed when he told me that the Al Pacino film Scarface was contemplating to be remade. 'Why do they want to spoil the classics?'

I told him that the the 1983 version that he loves so much was a remake!

Howard Hawks 1932 original is a pre Hays code version based on mobsters in Chicago at the time. Tony 'Scarface' Camonte (Paul Muni) is a bodyguard for a bootlegger Big Louis Costillo who he kills. The ambitious Tony wants a piece of the action, a step up the ladder and joins up with another mobster, Johnny Lovo who arranged the hit and got Tony out of police custody.

This is the beginning of the gang wars in Chicago as Lovo expands his operation, Tony who is more aggressive in taking out his rivals is aided by his coin flipping sidekick Guino Rinaldo (George Raft.)

Tony is attracted by Lovo's dame Poppy (Karen Morley) and plans to one day bump off Lovo. After all Tony thinks the world is his and there for the taking. However he also has an almost incestous obsession with his sister, the floozy Cesca who herself is attracted to Guino.

This is a violent gangster film, with some grisly dark humour. There is a tabloid feel to this picture. It starts of with some moralising that the government is doing nothing to stop the gang warfare, there is talk at one point of deporting these thugs, they are not even American citizens.

I was rather taken aback with how strong the violent action scenes would be for the audience of the time. Tony loves firing that machine gun. The film rattles along at quite a pace and yet also feels strangely offbeat.

It is noticeable how much of the fundamental story is later used by Brian De Palma for his updated version.

As other have accurately pointed out, this is an unusual film for Hawks. For one thing, there really is no hero. Muni looks rather anthropoid in this movie. He seems to live in a dump and is content to let his mother and sister live in a similar dump. He throws his mother around too, the swine. There is little of the male solidarity we've come to expect from Hawks. Everyone in the film seems manipulative.

There are a couple of other uncharacteristic features here. Some fancy editing takes place as a chattering tommy gun seems to blow away the pages of a calendar. And the later Hawks would have considered the symbolic use of all those Xs to be pretentious. (Hawks claimed he got the idea from a photo in a tabloid newspaper of a murder scene after the body had been removed, but an X was entered into the pic to denote the body's position.) Of course many of his characters had little quirks, rubbing their noses with a finger or whatever, but they were behavioral touches rather than artifactual. After this film he seems to have given up on built-in symbolic oddities and gone with George Raft's coin flipping instead.

But, the main plot aside, Tony Camonte's attitude towards his sister, a characteristically non-obedient babe with melanic eye rings like a panda's, is straightforwardly covert. I've never been sure he knew exactly what he was doing with forbidden impulses like incest or homosexuality. I mean, the guy was from Goshen, Indiana! He didn't know from Freud. As he once put it in an interview, "They attribute all these things to me. . . . It's completely unconscious." Ann Dvorak, as the sister, does a mean kootchy kootchy for Raft in the nightclub vestibule, by the way.

This is definitely worth catching, although it doesn't seem to be shown much on TV. It belongs with Little Caesar and Public Enemy as one of the films to establish an entire genre.

If you're in the mood for a classic gangster film with a lot of action and violence, this one may suit you. Paul Muni is in the role of Tony Camonte, an up and coming gangster with a scar on his face that resembles a giant cross. He's far from saintly though, and aggressively pushes to expand his territory, piling up bodies as he goes, and lusting after both his boss's girlfriend (Karen Morley) and his own sister (Ann Dvorak).

Muni exaggerates his facial expressions a bit too much, but he's fantastic in some scenes, such as the one where he fixes an icy stare at his boss (Osgood Perkins), when he finds he's been betrayed. As an aside, some of his expressions reminded me of James Franco; see if you agree. As for the rest of the cast, it's a mixed bag. Perkins (incidentally, Anthony Perkins' father) isn't all that convincing as his boss, he's just not tough enough. It's interesting to see Boris Karloff (and in one scene, bowling no less), but he doesn't quite seem to fit. Ann Dvorak is strong as his sister who has just turned 18 and is looking for a good time. My favorite scene with her is when she tries to get Muni's right-hand man (George Raft) to dance. Raft turned in what I thought was the best performance, understated but tough, flipping a coin menacingly (so iconic!), and really looking the part.

Most of the scenes director Howard Hawks gives us aren't all that special from my perspective. The ones that stand out are the St. Valentine's Day massacre execution shot, which had seven shadows on a wall mowed down by machine gun fire, and then later, a body dumped out of a moving car with the ominous note "stay out of the North Side."

The political messages in the film are heavy-handed, but it's interesting in that they span both sides of today's political spectrum, arguing for tougher gun control laws, while at the same time, to deport illegal immigrants. It's also interesting that while the film ostensibly states it purpose is to show true events to spur action against gangsters and violence, it seems to do a fair bit of glorifying them, just as 'The Public Enemy' had the year before. Oh, how America loves its guns and gangster films, and how well this film fits in with understanding its character, and a long history of violence.

This is certainly a decent film, especially if you like the genre, though I liked 'The Public Enemy' better, mainly because of Cagney. Muni himself is far better in 'I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang' which he also did in 1932, and I would recommend it over 'Scarface' as well.

Unlike James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson in their career making roles as gangsters, Paul Muni after Scarface was able to avoid being typecast for his career. Only rarely did Muni return to a gangster part in his career.

It must not have been easy for him because Muni is absolutely mesmerizing as the totally amoral Tony Camonte. After Scarface was released Muni was inundated with offers to play gangsters which he rejected. Interesting because without knowing it another of the cast in Scarface, Boris Karloff, would be ultimately trapped in the horror film genre. Muni assuredly avoided Karloff's fate.

Another cast member, George Raft, got his big film break playing Muni's right hand man. For Raft this was art imitating life, these were the people who were his pallies in real life, there was never any acting involved. Raft never really had too many acclaimed performances away from the gangster/big city genre.

Camonte is the ultimate killing machine. He knows only one law the law of the jungle. He'll rise by any means possible, use anyone it takes, kill anyone who gets in his way. He has only two weaknesses, an obsession that borders on incestuous desires for his sister Ann Dvorak and a kind of affection for his factotum Vince Barnett. That's the kind of affection you have for a pet.

Barnett who usually played drunks and hangers-on got his career role out of Scarface. What comic relief there is in the film he provides. He's got some good moments as a 'secretary' trying to take a phone message with bullets flying all around him. Had he been not dispatched to take the message the machine gun bullets would have found their mark easily in the taller Muni.

Scarface is also art that imitates life. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the history of gangland war in the Chicago of the Twenties will recognize Muni as Capone, Boris Karloff as Bugs Moran, and Osgood Perkins as Johnny Torio. Capone could have sued, but right about then he was having much bigger problems with Internal Revenue.

We can't forget Karen Morley who played Poppy the girl who likes to go with a winner. She shifts from Perkins to Muni and away from Muni when it becomes necessary. In her own way, she's as amoral as Muni.

Scarface along with Public Enemy and Little Caesar set the standard for gangster films. The updated 1983 remake with Al Pacino in Muni's part is a good film itself and got a lot of its audience with some really gory scenes.

Muni did it with talent alone.

This film is based on real events that happened in the criminal career of Al Capone, although Capone's criminal career had already ended with his conviction on charges of tax evasion six months before this film was released in April 1932. You know you're watching a Howard Hughes production when, during the first scene, a bar employee is sweeping up after a party held by one of Chicago's big gangsters and finds a bra among the confetti. The film shares some aspects with its gangster film predecessors - Tony Camonte is motivated by a desire for power just as Edward G. Robinson's Rico was in "Little Caesar", and also like Rico takes over the gang from a boss he perceives as weak. However, Camonte doesn't seem to have the pent-up rage of Public Enemy's Tom Powers. When Tony performs acts of violence it is usually related to gangland business. The actual deaths are strictly business, but the execution of the killings themselves are something Tony takes pride in - a sort of work of art on his part.

Like Tom Powers, Tony Camonte is given a family background, but unlike Tom Powers, Camonte's family is a completely dysfunctional one. What is unique in this gangster picture is Tony's trio of love interests. He wants his boss' girl, Poppy, as a status symbol. He also seems to have a love affair going with the machine gun, acting like he has discovered America the first time he shoots one. Finally, Tony is in love with his own sister Cesca. Tony's only true fits of rage occur when he sees her with another man, and it is this loss of emotional control over this one issue that is ultimately his downfall. George Raft, an ex-gangster of sorts himself, is terrific as the smart and level-headed Guino Rinaldo, Tony's right-hand man. Finally there is Vince Barnett as Tony's extremely inadequate secretary in a bit of comic relief turned tragic at the end of the film.