MUBI

A story of the rise and fall of Chicago gangster Tony Camonte, Scarface is legendary. Jean-Luc Godard named it as the best American sound film. Oliver Stone updated it for the 1983 Brian De Palma-helmed remake. After the formal adoption of the Hays Code in 1934, there wouldn’t be another American film this violent until the release of Bonnie and Clyde nearly 40 years later. Scarface wasn’t the genesis of the gangster flick, but it is one of the best. Paul Muni, in the title role, plays a convincingly unhinged and frightening thug. Much to my surprise, the female characters (Tony’s sister Cesca and girlfriend Poppy, played by Ann Dvorak and Karen Morely respectively) are quite interesting in their own right. Shot in the shadows and chock full of symbolism (you’ll see an “x” somewhere onscreen every time Tony makes a kill), this is classic Hawks at his best.

The film opens by announcing itself as “an indictment of gang rule,” but that won’t fool you—this is an early example of America’s tantalized fascination with the myth of living tough and fast and rich and going down in a hail of gunfire. By the time Brian DePalma remade it, filling out the details and turning a B-picture into an epic, even the pretense of moralizing would be gone. It’s worth noting that in the original, a policeman delivers an impassioned speech about the horrors crime; in the remake, the closest analogy is Al Pacino’s inebriated say-goodnight-to-the-bad-guy rant, where he justifies gangsterhood by pointing a finger at America’s Reagan-era elite. As for the film itself, the performances and dialogue are considerably stiffer here than what would come to characterize Hawks in the future. But the original Scarface is still tough, fast, rich, and visually inventive. Watch the way a tommy gun blows away pages of a calendar to visualize time passing in a string of violence, and you can see why the Cahiers crowd adored it. And keep an eye out for the Xs.

9 out of 10.

Scarface was perhaps the most violent film made when it came out, and its violence still shocks today. In some ways I think it is even more Violent than the remake. Its also a much tighter film than the remake, but where I feel Scarface falls short is Paul Muni. Muni’s Camonte never intimidated me, nor did he radiate any kind of charisma that Capone and other gangster’s have to have in order to lead a criminal organization. Cagney would have been great in this role, because he has that magnetism, and the two films that I have seen Muni in, this and “I am a fugitive from a chain gang” Muni has never once displayed any kind of screen presence. Muni and Karen Morley, who plays Poppy come off as amateurs compared to the rest of the cast, and this ultimately keeps the film from being a 4 or 5 star picture.

On the other hand, De Palma’s “Scarface” features far better acting, but its lack of originality and lack of a conscience bring it down.