Review: Scarface (1932)
Like many of my generation, I first encountered Scarface as a very violent Brian DePalma film that was released in the early 1980s (didn’t see it til the early 1990s, my parents weren’t that permissive). The credits of that film obviously cite the Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht movie, and I further read about it (very scrambled memories being assembled for narrative momentum here) in something that filmmaker Francois Truffaut wrote, something that commended the Boris Karloff murder scene as represented by the falling of a bowling pin. I think Truffaut also said that Paul Muni, as the titular Tony Camonte, gave a startlingly apeish performance in the role. I almost saw this film in college but a mishap prevented that.
Seven or eight years later, I’ve finally caught up with Hawks’ blunt, brutal, lean, inventive, badass gangster picture, and its so nice to be able to say that a classic film is every bit as good as its considerable reputation, and actually (barring a few exceptions) ages better than the fifty years younger remake that it inspired. The DePalma film is exhilarating and live wire in places, but it is very much a part of the 1980s. With the exception of a laughable intro card that was probably insisted upon by the censors, the old Scarface ages exceptionally well, and is a remarkably perverse picture, certainly one of the best criminal gluttony movies ever made.
Paul Muni owns this. Yes, the acting, even from him, is a bit more presentational than we are used to, but that suits the part of a low rent gangster who flies too close to the sun to a tee, he’s supposed to seem a bit obvious, and brutish. I imagine that this role was very influential in how many great actors would approach the fall of the crime lord movie. Muni shows you the brute, the gaudy showoff, but he intimates the calculation behind that, and the animal hunger that’s behind even that. Camonte is a complete creature of impulse, and its that impulse that causes him to topple. The more morally murky, too little too late motivations behind Tony’s sacking in the later film is non-existent here.
In the finish of this film, Paul Muni has essentially become King Kong (Truffaut was right), and, though much more vicious and unforgiving than that ape, a similar pathos arises as Muni chokes on tear gas and writhes and collapses in a hail of bullets. This ending was probably originally meant to be played as unquestionably happy, but Muni has brought too much life, vigor and uncontainable need for it us to accept it so patly.
Hawks, one of the most respected directors of all time, seems to be roused by Muni and the subject matter. Hawks is a master craftsman, no doubt, but he’s not usually a showy guy, his patterns usually emerge in theme more than camera pyrotechnics. His work in Scarface is flamboyant, and playful, with enough death metaphor for ten movies, or half of The Departed. One of Muni’s other super famous performances, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, has been sitting around my house forever, unwatched. That will soon change.
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