(1932)

Starring Paul Muni, George Raft, Anne Dvorak, Boris Karloff; dir: Howard Hawks

Scarface is one of the trio of films, along with Little Caesar and Public Enemy, that defines the gangster genre. Like those films it made its star a star. Muni (real name Muni Weisenfreund, a hit on Broadway from the ‘teens) is dynamite, filling the screen whenever he’s on and leaving a vacuum in his wake – gesticulating, hamming it up, threatening – communicating with an urgency and intensity that leaves polite debates about other actors’ ‘reach’ in his dust. Something of a chameleon (he is largely forgotten today), his forté was the biopic, as epitomised by his Oscar-winning performance in The Story of Louis Pasteur. It’s an obvious pun to say he could ‘ape’ his subjects, as he plays Al Capone here with a simian relish which Leslie Halliwell considered as "like King Kong".

Yet it’s a flattering, irresistible portrait (no wonder Capone liked it!). The Big Man is said to have watched his own personal copy of Scarface six times and thrown a party for Hawks on completion. Both the director and producer Howard Hughes considered it their favorite of all their films. Today it just seems surprisingly good. Clearly ahead of its time, it’s remarkably modern, showing up many of its contemporaries as stiff and static in that peculiarly ‘30s Hollywood way. Hawks was evidently inventing many future clichés here as many shots ring with a familiarity that sets up expectations and telegraph outcomes – only because we’ve seen them so many times since.

Scarface is a film whose own backstory in some ways threatens to eclipse its viewing experience. The censorship battles lasting two years are legendary, surrounded as they are with stories of verisimilitude guaranteed not just by tabloid reporters on the payroll (The Chicago Tribune’s crime ace, Fred Palsey) but mobsters as well ringing up offering their services as ‘advisers’; Capone scoffing at its claims to authenticity when interviewed by trade paper Variety (!); Hawks actually machine-gunning a set for that final touch of cordite-smoking reality; the different endings to appease the censor; the bootleg prints in defiance of Hughes’ attempts to suppress it for decades and Hawks locking the negative in a safe for decades out of the billionaire’s reach; the New York State censored version sending Gotham gore-hounds across the river for the ‘Joisey’ version; the list is seemingly endless!

But some of its currents remain untapped. Claims that its fabled high concept - ‘the Borgias set in Chicago’ (for which read incest) were diluted beyond recognition ring a bit unconvincing today. In its raw landscape of desire there is an inescapable love triangle set up between the Muni (Capone), George Raft (sidekick – don’t you love that term!) and Dvorak (Al’s sister) characters.

And no one seems to point out that its story hinges on technology. It’s the introduction of the tommy gun that the narrative turns on. Compact, mobile and efficient, this could be a paradigm of any one of a host of historical breakthroughs (like computers) overturning the old order.

Fabled for its insistent ‘X’ symbolism, this aspect seems bludgeoningly heavy handed today; only the lattice work (showing a plurality of ‘X’s) preceding the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre retains any lightness of touch.

No matter, for Scarface lives on amongst its brethren for its high energy and enduring timelessness, validating Hughes’ boast that his film would be the gangster film to end them all.