Thoughts on Scarface (1932)

I must start by saying this is my absolute favorite film we've seen in class so far; perhaps I am just not a silent film person! There was so much to like about this film despite the glaringly obvious political message that I felt distracted from the art. (Although it obviously was a necessary message at the time, the newspaper editor's cheesy speech directed straight at the camera in the middle of the film kind of pulled me out of the magic for a bit!)

I noticed a multitude of new techniques that we haven't seen in class yet. In the first scene, we watch the restaurant owner (?) walk through the door, and the camera follows him at a parallel so we get to see a cutaway of the wall. We also saw the "silhouette" technique used a great deal; I can't remember if we saw this in the clips from yesterday, but I was definitely struck by its use here. The passing-of-time montage in the beginning of the film was pretty cool, too. Machine gun fire is superimposed over calendar pages flying away--it might look cheesy now, but I bet it was neat then! The use of symbolism is also much more obvious here. The eerie whistling as Comante's trademark harbinger of death was particularly creepy. There are many, many other examples of both subtle and overt symbolism in this film, but I have more to say on a different topic. :)

I think the part that made this film so compelling for me was the superb acting. I truly believed all of the characters; especially Comante. Tony's character had a rough, slightly dull but definitely dangerous charisma about him that I think truly illustrated the siren call of gang life at the time. He is young, vibrant and determined in a way that is clearly absent in the short-lived Louis we see at the beginning of the film. The police chief's (?) rant about the changing landscape of organized crime in the city is illustrated in no better way than through the contrast of Comante with the old bosses Louis, Lovo and Gaffney. (On a side note, I noticed that Boris Karloff played the Irish crime lord Gaffney in this film; somehow, he really still looked like Frankenstein minus the neck bolts!)

Comante's motto, "Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it" is recited menacingly over a handgun near the beginning of the film. One gets the sense that the organized crime scene in the city was different in previous years; the cops and the mob were at odds, but in a way that was respectful of each other. This very much reminds me of the change in the way the public viewed war after WWI; it used to be an honorable though inevitable endeavor. Each side stuck to the unwritten rules, and honored their enemeies with the strange respect of the battlefield. However, things changed and it became a horrifying bloodbath that neither side really wanted a part of. It seemed like, in this movie, the younger, hotheaded mobsters were pushing the unwritten rules of war between the cops and the mob to the brink.

As I was watching Comante's lightning rise to power and even faster downfall, I was strongly reminded of a character in a more current film. Heath Ledger's character The Joker in "The Dark Knight" (2008) has a similar dark magnetism. He is sometimes funny, sometimes scary, and it always feels like he's holding a grenade with his fingers on the pin. At one point another character calls him a "mad dog"; this is exactly what made me connect The Joker and Comante. They are both a little above (or below, whichever suits you) normal human thinking. Their minds just don't work the same way. They see what they want and they get it, no matter what might fall in their way. The only difference between the two is that Comante wants the world for himself, while The Joker only wants to watch it burn.

I thought Scarface was an exceptional film, and am now definitely considering watching the 1982 version. However, I have a feeling that "Say hello to my little friend!" isn't quite going to top the dark beauty of the 1932 film.