In an era of pure id, Howard Hawks’s Scarface still manages to feel especially elemental. Its lust for violence, for sex, for power, for victory is embedded in every frame. It is representative of the degradation the Production Code felt it needed to wrangle, and in so wrangling, redefine the moral portrait of America. To snatch it away from the sinners, the bootleggers, the lust that drives America closer towards itself. To its own id. Produced by Howard Hughes, it’s representative of what interested him about cinema – pure energy and base, sordid emotion.
Loosely based on the novel of the same name, which was inspired by Al Capone, Scarface portrays Italian immigrant gangster Tony Camonte as he tears through every legal and illegal faction of Chicago to gain whatever’s left that he doesn’t have. Before the film’s even begun, his insatiable appetite for what’s next is his defining feature. Killed one boss? There’ll be another. Seduced his girl? Why not his sister. There’s always someone to kill, someone to bed, someone to coerce, something to steal. It’s go, go, go. It’s take, take, take. It’s energy. It’s cinema. It’s America.
Paul Muni made two films in 1932 – this and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Both are an excavation of different areas of the soul. An accomplished theatre actor, Muni’s physicality and lack of vanity stand in stark contrast to other stars of the time, who – and I say this as a clear admirer of the golden age of Hollywood – had plenty of personality to fill the screen. Neither are better; Muni simply stands out by contrast. Tony is a grown child, an ambling teenager given license to do all that a teenage boy would like to do after everyone’s gone to bed and he’s only his own desires to fill his head. Muni somehow makes himself larger than life and something of a wee lad.
Hawks, for his part, had already made ten films by the time Scarface came around. He still had dozens to go. Scarface was his first classic, his first to spend an ongoing eternity influencing everything that came after it. There were other gangster films at the time. Warner Brothers practically had cornered the market. And yet there’s nothing like Scarface for its thrill. Nothing that quite captures the electric sensation of having the world at your fingertips, and the desperate, clawing grasp to claim it. He’d made exceedingly fine films before, but this set a certain template for the type of electricity he’d spend the rest of his career chasing across numerous genres.
This is the fifth Hawks film to enter The Criterion Collection, his earliest, and his first on 4K UHD. A 1932 black-and-white film whose original negative doesn’t exist anymore will have certain natural limitations that are immediately apparent – some shots softer than others, a lack of depth and density – and the distinctions between the 4K disc and the included Blu-ray (also sold separately) are much more minor compared to other titles I’ve reviewed. That said, you’re not going to find a cleaner or more robust version of the film out there. There’s an early interrogation scene where the details in both the black and bright white areas of the images are very well-rendered and evident. Having not seen the film since it first popped up on DVD, it made it a real thrill to revisit.
The special features are quite few and a little soft. Film scholar Lea Jacobs provides a 20-minute piece ostensibly focused on the sound design of the film, but provides a good overview of the general aesthetic traits of the film, from image to acting, that make it stand out from other early talkies. It’s worth watching, but the presentation is fairly dry.
Livelier and less-informative is a conversation between author Megan Abbott and actor Bill Hader. Abbott drives the conversation with a rush of enthusiasm, but Hader – despite his many appearances in these sorts of pieces and evident fondness for classic film – sometimes seems like he doesn’t know why he’s there. It’s a friendly dialogue, occasionally funny, and does a decent job recounting the cultural legacy of the film, though their observations are more often presented in the sort of “isn’t that wild?” style that allows a distance from the film, leaning back rather than leaning into topics like violence in society, incest, and racism.
The disc also includes the film’s alternate ending, much-discussed in the special features, and just as dull as suggested. A necessary inclusion for academic reasons, and the kind of thing that makes the viewer appreciate how little Hughes and Hawks cared about social responsibility.
Finally, we get a brilliant essay by Imogen Sara Smith that left me longing for a commentary track.
Scarface remains a brilliant, essential film, and Criterion’s new disc gives it to us looking better than ever. The supplements are more affable than illuminating, but provide a fine accompaniment to the film.
