SCARFACE (1932)

This is a historically important pre-Code movie: in its day, it was considered extremely violent and for that reason, and because it supposedly glorified the gangster lifestyle, it was a frequently censored film. It also helped to establish the gangster movie genre as we know it today--even THE GODFATHER, which is often thought of as the, well, "godfather" of the modern gangster movie, owes much to SCARFACE. Nevertheless, the movie is rather slow going for much of its running time. Paul Muni plays Tony, a two-bit hood who acts on his aspirations to be rich and powerful; he gets in good with crime boss Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins), killing off betrayers and rivals, but he eventually goes too far for Lovo's comfort so Tony kills Lovo and anyone else who stands in his way. Contrasted with his rise in power is his messy private life; he is interested in Poppy (Karen Morley), Lovo's girl, but she plays hard to get. Clearly, his real feelings lie with his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak); he's overly protective of her (perhaps with some reason, since she seems headed into a rather "loose" lifestyle), but his protection seems to spring mostly from his own unacknowledged physical lust for her. Tony's trusted right-hand man Rinaldo (George Raft) falls for Cesca and while Tony is gone in hiding for a while, Rinaldo marries Cesca. When Tony returns, he finds the two living together and, not realizing they are husband and wife, kills Rinaldo. The climax has a horde of cops closing in on Tony; Cesca wants to kill him, but can't bring herself to do so, so she winds up helping him to fend off the cops. They both end up dead.

Relationships between characters are not always clear, and some of the acting is weak. Muni and Dvorak are very good, as is Raft (he seems fresh here, but he got stuck in an acting rut for most of the rest of his career). Morley is a weak link--she seems totally disengaged from her character, though I can't help but think that this is partly a fault of the direction (by Howard Hawks). Osgood Perkins (the father of Anthony Perkins) is not a commanding enough presence to be a believable crime boss--he seems like he should be a whiny underling. Some of the cinematography is quite good, especially the long tracking shots that start the movie, when we see Muni make his first hit after an all-night party. Critics have noticed the preponderance of "X" shapes, mostly in shadows and usually related to the foreshadowing of death scenes. This is the second time I've seen the movie and I think it's more worth seeing as a historical example than has a fully-engrossing movie. The 1983 remake with Al Pacino isn't a particularly good movie, but it does highlight the undercurrent of incest which is only hinted at in the original, and it also has a hell of an ending, closely modeled after the 1932 ending but again much more explicit. [TCM]