We reviewed a rather good Blu-ray of Howard Hawks’ Scarface just three years ago, and were happy when Criterion announced a domestic disc last Fall. But a 4K Ultra HD release? The film elements that have survived look just good enough to yield a reasonable Blu-ray image. Reader interest has been high enough to do another review once-over, and to compare Criterion’s new encoding to the April, 2021 [Imprint] release.
Brian De Palma’s excess-driven 1983 remake can’t hold a candle to this 1932 original, which antagonized the censors that were able to get a restrictive Production Code passed two years later. Along with its contemporary gangster classics Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, Scarface was accused of glorifying criminality. Ben Hecht’s’ screenplay used a nickname for the notorious Al Capone, who had just been convicted of income tax evasion. The gang war depicted in the show depicts the St. Valentines’ Day Massacre, then a relatively recent event. With similar name changes, we meet stand-ins for notable hoods like Bugs Moran and Dion O’Bannion. Hecht once reported that after Scarface, some hoods visited him on behalf of the Chicago mob, just to chat. He and his playwriting partner Charles MacArthur ( The Front Page) had been newspapermen, sometimes writing crime stories. When a reporter in Scarface asks for an interview with a big hood, Hecht gave him MacArthur’s name.
The famed pre-Code gangster stars Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney are of course indelible originals with distinctive styles. The noted stage actor Paul Muni would soon be better known for playing ‘great men‘ of history. Paul Muni’s ‘scarfaced’ gangster isn’t as easy to pin down — he’s a loathsome sociopath, a vulgar immigrant with zero self-control and even less self-awareness. But he’s always a menace, even when his gun moll laughs up her sleeve at his lack of manners and fashion sense.
Italian-American hit man Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) murders the top mob boss Big Louis Costillo (Henry J. Vejar) so that Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) can take over the South Side. Tony’s strong-arm tactics quickly bring the bootleggers into line, but he is soon disobeying orders, moving into the North Side domain of Gaffney (Boris Karloff) and igniting a shooting war. Tony also makes moves on Lovo’s moll, Poppy (Karen Morley). His protective attitude toward his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak) verges on incestuous possessiveness. It leads directly to his downfall, when Cesca falls in love with Tony’s closest associate, gunman Guino Rinaldo (George Raft).
A big slice of America has always hated immigrants on the basis of race, religion and ethnicity. Italian anti-defamation leagues must have been in an uproar over Paul Muni’s Tony Camonte, a woefully ignorant goon who sees Chicago as the Land of Opportunity for banditry on any level. Camonte isn’t part of a Mafia, he’s just a thug who ought to be deported.
He’s also a borderline psycho, with good reflexes but an infantile mind, who only sees things he wants to take. Camonte is positively ecstatic to get his hands on a submachine gun: “Get out of my way Johnny, I’m gonna spit!” At times Muni makes Tony seem primitive, almost ape-like. His untethered appetites and crude manners reminded critic Robin Wood of Fredric March’s very simian interpretation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released just the previous year.
Playing pretty boy to Muni’s ‘oily’ thug is the dancer-turned actor George Raft. His Guino Rinaldo is a loyal colleague given the famous bit of business of flipping a coin — legendary gangster lore that Billy Wilder later reprised for nostalgic effect. The fantasy of brotherly loyalty in organized crime is a common theme in classic gangster films. Scarface finds tragedy in a mixup between Tony and Guino.
Maladjusted in her own way, Karen Morley’s gold digger Poppy is always looking for the Strong Man. She responds to Tony’s grotesquely blunt come-ons, amused that he misreads her insults as praise. Poppy becomes Tony’s girl when he takes over the mob. She clearly digs Tony’s crazy side, sharing in his excitement over his new machine gun. It’s a gangland spin on ‘baby makes three.’
Although Scarface has no explicit sex scenes, Poppy is obviously shacked up with Lovo and then Tony. She’s even more of a trophy dish than was Jean Harlow in The Public Enemy. Some say that the platinum blond Tony greets on the way to his table is Jean Harlow, making a cameo bit appearance.
Even more of an erotic charge is delivered by Ann Dvorak as Tony’s sister Cesca, an 18 year-old ‘wild kid’ eager to go crazy. Dvorak had worked as an assistant dance director before meeting Howard Hughes; the racy bit of dance-pantomime she puts on for Guino Rinaldo is a highlight of pre-Code sex appeal. The steadfast Guino is actually a good influence on Cesca.
Scarface excels on other levels as well. Tony Camonte’s mugging is often very funny, as when he all but becomes aroused by the steel shutters newly installed in his apartment. Tony’s hoodlum ‘secretary’ Angelo (Vince Barnett) provides direct comedy relief as a clown who can’t read or write and is incapable of answering a telephone. If Tony’s manic enthusiasm makes him seem infantile, Angelo is an outright baby. He is used several times to take the edge off a violent scene. In an Italian restaurant, Angelo keeps trying to talk on a telephone, even as the dinery is being shot up by Gaffney’s hoods. It’s the famous ‘drive by’ machine gun parade depicted in most every film about Al Capone.
Howard Hawks’ film is far more violent than either Little Caesar or The Public Enemy. Although some killings occur off camera, numerous machine gunnings, bombings, and other mayhem is right up front for the camera. Montages show hoods blasting at each other from vintage cars and then crashing into light posts and store fronts. Tony’s gangland demise is more violent as well. Cagney and Robinson exit with an element of pathos, but Tony goes out in a blaze of glory, fueled by his twisted relationship with Cesca and a definingly damning mistake. He’s so crazed that he neglects the basics, like closing those steel shutters. Nobody over-reaches like an American gangster with the flaw of Hubris. The only exit is madness.
Scoring high in eroticism, humor and its violence, Scarface is also designed for maximum expressiveness. Hawks never allows the film frame settle into standard coverage. Tony is constantly on the move, and the camera must rush to track with him through bars, night clubs, and offices. The film’s striking transition montages quickly became a cliché. A machine gun is superimposed over calendar pages flying away — ‘another bullet, another day gone by.’ The imagery was so strong that the new Production Code made submachine guns a Hollywood taboo.
“X” marks the spot.
The most explicit bit of expressionist filmmaking is a graphic ‘X’ motif, that marks most of the film’s killings with a literal X, somewhere in the film frame. A big X hovers behind the main titles, and repeats whenever somebody is murdered. We see the Xs on a bowling scorecard, as guns are fired off-screen. In a down angle on a victim on the sidewalk, a street sign provides the X. The art directors even come up with seven X’s for the infamous mass murder at the Clark Street Garage. The X’s have a weird effect, as if God were branding black marks on America’s moral scorecard.
A lot has been written about Howard Hughes’ battle with the Production Code Office over Scarface. As an independent he refused to censor his picture, resulting in many bans. Hughes was too powerful to suppress, so negotiations dragged out. A text opening was added, and maybe a pro- Law & Order speech, and eventually an entire different ending was filmed, showing Tony Camonte’s execution by hanging. Audiences in New York City were shown the censored ending, but fans could see the film uncut by taking a short train ride to New Jersey. The movie was banned outright when Code enforcement came, but Hughes retained the original version.
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