Sunday, September 15, 2024

NFR Project: 'Scarface: The Shame of a Nation' (1932)

 

NFR Project: ‘Scarface: The Shame of a Nation’

Dir: Howard Hawks, Richard Rosson

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

Pho: Lee Garmes, L.W. O’Connell

Ed: Edward Curtiss

Premiere: April 9, 1932

93 min.

Three key gangster films hit the big screen in 1932, triggering a surge in the genre that would last until the beginning of World War II. Little Caesar and The Public Enemy launched the careers of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, respectively. Scarface illustrated the versatility of its central actor, the great Paul Muni.

Muni had also played the tormented hero of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang that year. His Tony Camonte is light years away from that characterization. Tony is a regular guy, full of fun, admirably ambitious, certain of himself. He’s also a homicidal maniac with an unnatural attachment to his sister. How Muni negotiates the bizarrely conflicting aspects of this happy-go-lucky killer is a master class in handling ambiguity.

The film is framed as an indictment of gang violence, even more explicit in its contempt for gangsters and gangsterism than any other film out at that time. However, Tony seems to live a charmed life and rapidly ascends to the heights of power before his tragic flaws destroy him and everyone around him.

The story is a typical Rake’s Progress, a rise and a precipitous fall. Tony starts as a petty hood in what is assumed to be Chicago, but soon his passion for gunplay merits him advancement. He doesn’t strategize – he simply intimidates speakeasy owners, and murders his competition.

Howard Hawks helms this essential classic. More than other gangster films, Scarface seems to emerge from the gloom, taking place always at night, always in the heart of the urban jungle. Camonte is a predator, and the illegal booze business is just a dark arena for him to stalk.

The high-contrast cinematography marks the film with deep blacks, and shafts of light. At its most intense moments, the characters are submerged and reappear from the shadows. Hawks plays with the letter “X” – we find it everywhere mayhem occurs . . . like the Lucia di Lammermoor aria Camonte whistles whenever he makes up his mind to kill.

Ann Dvorak is a revelation as Camonte’s sister, a wild young thing who resents her brother’s constant interference in her affairs. George Raft makes an impression in his iconic role as the coin-flipping sidekick, Rinaldo.

Hawks’s tough style and Muni’s intensity raise this film far above others of its kind, and can be said to be a quintessential American movie. We love our gangsters, much as we might disavow them.

When Tony receives his comeuppance, the camera pans to a flashing billboard above the dirty street. “THE WORLD IS YOURS,” it blinks.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: A Study in Reds.

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