Scarface 1932

Howard Hawks starts this open faced sandwich of crime and sex with a very quiet scene. It’s a beautiful expressionistic sequence of an early morning milk man on his rounds, a street light turns off and the camera tracks to a private club where an all night party has obviously taken place. We enter the room that is riotously festooned with decorations and as a waiter cleans up and finds a lost bra we hear voices which belong to some gangsters discussing business. The party was for the Boss who is soon dismissed by a bullet from a gun belonging to a silhouetted shadow behind a glass door. This silhouette is our introduction to Tony Camonte, the Scarface of the title. This was Hawks first big break as a director, it made him, and it also made Paul Muni a major Hollywood player. Muni came from the Yiddish Theatre and made his first film in 1929 “The Valiant getting an Oscar nomination for it, but left Hollywood to go back to Broadway. Something pulled him back to do this film, maybe it was Hawks or the snappy Ben Hecht screenplay or maybe it was the chance for him to play a dark spot, a damp stain, a festering wound, a sexual beast with a big X scar across one cheek who creeps along the thin edge of being a psychopath. This is a gangster who for a change has a mother who can’t stand him, there’s no sweet cooing and making excuses for him, no “Tony is a good boy” bullshit coming from Inez Palange’s mouth who plays his mama mia. This was a ground breaking role in his early film career before he became Mr. Paul Muni goody two shoes Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola. Muni startles in this film (he would also rock the next year in I Am a Fugitive From A Chain Gang) but as this Tony gangster he really stuns you as he storms all over the screen. Obviously based on Al Capone (Capone was never this hot or sexy), it is a great raw and vivid performance, this sexy beast is a wet dream, a hot flash, just watch how he moves across a room, or exits a scene to see what great acting is all about. Sure it’s dated but so what. That’s one of the things I love about the film. It takes place back then which was 1932 real time. No research for costumes or décor needed just tell the dames to wear their everyday clothes and gowns. Set in a back lot dismal Chicago with patent leather streets and beautiful cars racing fast and furious with the occupants shooting up the town and each other, this is the place that Camonte wants to rule over, and as the Cook’s travel sign that hovers over the main strip reminds us and him over and over “The World Belongs To You.” Tony buys this advertising slogan but it’s all a ruse. The movie was also a semi star making vehicle for Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley and George Raft. Raft who was known for his sexy good looks, dancing abilities and his connections to real life hoods plays Rinaldo, Camonte’s pal and fellow gangster. Raft also drips sexuality as he sits there flipping his coins or slouching around the dames in his overcoat and white fedora hat, he’s a deep dark chocolate fudge sundae who makes the mistake of giving in to Scarface’s equally deep dark chocolate fudge Sundae sister who is hot to trot and is played by the beautiful Ann Dvorak. Raft who made terrible career choices, (he turned down High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and Double Indemnity for which we should be forever grateful to him) is good in this role, because basically all he has to do is look sexy and dangerous and flip those damn coins of his. A gangster playing a gangster. Tony and his sister rage and rant against each other with extra large portions of jealousy and anger & the incestuous feelings the two feel for each other is just beneath the surface. Much of the violence is off screen but this heated brother and sister vaudeville act is in our faces and must have taunted the censors and audiences alike. Two years later once the Hays Office began enforcing its code it would have been left on the proverbial cutting room floor along with the sensational dance that Dvorak does to tempt Raft into sexing it up with her. There is one scene that seems to have been put in to please the censors and outraged viewers and that is when a group of concerned citizens meet with a newspaper editor to complain about how his newspaper and newspapers in general are glorifying and mythicizing the gangster, and it rings hollow. Also in the cast are Boris Karloff as a rival gang leader who gets his in a bowling alley (great scene) and Osgood Perkins (father of Tony) who also gets his. Best Picture, director and actor of 1932.