Week Eleven: Scarface (1932)

Director: Howard Hawks

Producer: Howard Hawks and Howard Hughes

Writer: Ben Hecht, John Lee Mahin, Seton I. Miller, and W.R. Burnett

Cinematography: Lee Garmes and L.W. O’Connell

Music: Adolph Tandler

Starring: Paul Muni (Tony Camonte), Ann Dvorak (Cesca Camonte), George Raft (Guino Rinaldo), Vince Barnett (Angelo), Osgood Perkins (Johnny Lovo), Karen Morely (Poppy), Boris Karloff (Tom Gaffney), C. Henry Gordon (Inspector Ben Guarino)

Before You Watch the Movie
(First make sure you have read the introduction to this series)

During America’s Prohibition Era (1920-1933), when the selling and consuming of alcoholic drinks was prohibited, a new opportunity arose from criminal elements to profit on: bootlegging. Illegal importation and sale of alcohol was incredibly profitable business and many of the most wanted gangsters operating in America prospered greatly because of Prohibition. Al Capone, Johnny Torio, Frank Costello, and Lucky Luciano all amassed power and wealth due to their bootlegging activities and with such high stakes came competition, violence, and the corpses of countless also-rans. The public perception of gangsters during Prohibition often differed than that of other criminals because they provided a service to many (illegal alcohol) and the violence seemed, at least to the public, confined to other criminals, though that wasn’t really the case. Due to his donations to charity, Al Capone was thought of as a Robin Hood-type figuring, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. 

Outside of Prohibition, bank robbers like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd became folk heroes by stealing from the establishment and harming institutions that many blamed for the Depression just like the main “victims” of bootlegging were the government that shouldn’t have banned alcohol in the first place. Perhaps an even more obvious explanation for the appeal of gangsters to the public is the fact they were reality stars to the extreme. The facts of their violent exploits and inter-gang politics were splashed across the front page on a daily basis which the public could follow closely. Gangsters like Al Capone were celebrities that made public appearances and were a part of the culture of his time.

The popularity of gangsters did not go unnoticed by Hollywood, an industry never shy about jumping on a trend, and from the late twenties into the early thirties, gangster films became big box-office business. With the gangsters in their golden age, the public annoyed with the government, and censorship not quite what it would soon become under Joseph Breen, the film industry had a perfect storm to bring the violent, lurid tales of America’s gangsters to the screen. There wasn’t even much need to make up many plot details, truth was more fascinating than fiction when it came to gangsters so filmmakers could just transpose slightly altered versions of real-life events to the screen.

The life of Al Capone provided inspiration on a number of gangster films but none more so than Scarface, contains many elements taken directly from Capone’s life, though much is added as well.

To helm the project, celebrity millionaire producer and eventual recluse Howard Hughes hired Howard Hawks, a director who was still finding his way but would eventually go on to be one of the greatest, most versatile directors in Hollywood, a journey that took a big step forward with Scarface. In Hollywood during late twenties/early thirties there were primarily two types of directors, those that were in their prime during the silent era and those that were brought to Hollywood for the transition to sound. The former group, the Murnaus of the world, were primarily visual directors who had to learn to direct dialogue, while the latter category, like George Cukor, had the opposite path to follow. Hawks fell somewhere in the middle, he believed that the camera should be used to serve the telling of the story overall and yet there is also a visual creativity to his films. Above all Hawks was a master of pacing in his films, both visual and with dialogue, Scarface packs a ton of action and story in its 95 minutes because the scenes are so crisp with no wasted moments, everything happens with an energy, action, and violence that is sustained throughout the whole picture. The whole movie is summed up in the scene when a Tommy gun blasts through the pages of a tear-away calendar: rapid fire pace and action.

Though it isn’t used quite as much in Scarface, Hawks also began in the early thirties to speed up the delivery of his actors dialogue, often having them overlap in a frantic manner, a technique that would be on full display two years later in the comedy classic Twentieth Century (1934). Scarface still benefits from this rhythm as the dialogue scenes fly by as quickly as the action.

One of the most notable elements of Hawks visual creativity is the repeated use of the X motif. Throughout the film, X’s appear around the deaths of characters. Newspapers at the time of Scarface would put and X in crime scene photos to denote where the corpse lay, so Hawks incorporated this into the film. It doesn’t happen every time (there are way to many deaths in the movie for this to be feasible) but there are multiple examples.

X marks the dead guy.

Seven X's...

...seven corpses.

You can rent Scarface from Amazon

After You Watch the Movie (Spoilers Below)

Sometimes the X is used as foreshadowing as well, most prominently the back of Cesca’s dress during her argument with Tony. Not only does Tony threaten to kill her in this scene but eventually he is the cause her death during the film’s final shootout.

Guino, Cesca, and Lovo's deaths, foretold and fulfilled by the X.

Tony getting the X ends the film

Many parts of Scarface were inspired by real life events, including obviously the title of the film itself, which was Capone’s nickname due to the large scar on his face, a feature that Tony also has. 

A scarred face, shared by Tony and Al Capone

Tony comes to power after killing his former boss Big Louis just as Capone killed his boss Big Jim Colosimo. The scene in which members of the Irish mob are killed by men pretending to be police officers was based on the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Irish boss O’Hara is killed in a flower shop just as in real life Dion O’Bannion was killed in the same location on the orders of Capone. Moreover, much of the film is filled with classic gangster iconography from Tommy guns to drive-by shootings, gun molls, and of course Italians that love pasta. 

Drive-bys and Tommy Guns.

Ben Hecht, who did the bulk of the writing on the picture, worked for the Chicago Daily News during Capone’s reign and based many of the characters in the film on people he had met during that time. Hecht eventually became Hollywood’s premier screenwriter and often used his experiences as journalist in his pictures. Hecht wasn’t the only person involved in the film that used real-life as an inspiration: George Raft grew up in the slums of New York City and was friends with many famous real life gangsters, including Bugsy Siegel. Raft’s coin flipping gag was inspired by the habit of a real life acquaintance.

Despite being released before the Production Code was more strictly enforced, Scarface still faced many issues with the censors, for obvious reasons. In addition to the violence and innuendo in the film, censors objected the glorification of crime and insisted that Tony show himself to be a coward at the end of the film and that criminals be depicted as a menace to society, as reflected in the film’s sometimes subtitle The Shame of a Nation. 

Additionally, new elements were added such as the title cards at the beginning of the film and, without Hawks involvement a new scene was filmed in which the characters essentially preach to the camera, condemning with equal aplomb both gangsters and the public that were so fascinated with them. That’s right, the censors forced the addition of a scene shaming audiences for being interested in gangsters, in a film about gangsters! 

Censors also objected to the suggestive relationship between Tony and Cesca, which hints that there was something more familial affection between the brother and sister. Hecht and Hawks drew influence from the another family of Italian criminals, the Borgias, who famously were suspected of incest.

Tony only breaks down after losing his beloved sister.

The central character of Tony himself also presented problems for censors, he is a character without any special intelligence or charisma that kills his way to the top through sheer violence and a total lack of morals. Tony makes success as a criminal not only easy to achieve but incredibly rewarding, quickly acquiring money, beautiful women, and an expensive apartment, clothes, and jewelry. 

According to Scarface, life as a gangster can be pretty great...

...pretty girls will admire your expensive apartment...

...stack of new shirts...

...and metal window shades.

The “American Dream,” an immigrant making good just by hard work, is perverted in Scarface and film attempts to comment on hypocrisies of American culture and greed. In addition to perhaps his deviant desires toward his sister, Tony is also clearly aroused by violence, as witnessed by the scene in which he first gets to fire a Tommy gun. There is an ecstasy on his face in this scene that clearly tops any pleasure he gets in the company of Poppy. Again, in a much more subtle way that the clumsy censor inserted moments, Scarface criticizes America’s obsession with violence. 

The following of Tony, a criminal, as the film’s main character also foreshadows how film noir would often invert the classic movie hero by having the “bad guy” be the protagonist of the story.

Scarface was the last of the great gangster movies released in the early thirties, soon the stricter Production Code would make such films difficult and the tastes of audiences changed. With a few rare exceptions, gangster films would lay dormant until the seventies when the films like Mean Streets (1973) and The Godfather (1972) would bring the genre back in a big way. Since then gangster films have been a staple of movie production and will likely remain so for years; all owe a serious debt to the gangster films of the early thirties, Scarface most of all.

See Also

Little Caesar (1931) dir. Mervyn LeRoy

A star-making performance of Edward G. Robinson, his iconic characterization of Rico forever changed how gangsters were portrayed on the screen.

The Public Enemy (1931) dir. William A. Wellman

Released just a few month after, The Public Enemy did the same for Cagney and gangster films that Little Caesar did. Both Robinson and Cagney offer different dynamics from each other and Muni, but the latter two are notable because they were able to make their characters more likable than Tony.

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