By Will Ross
The 1932 Howard Hawks and 1983 Brian DePalma versions of Scarface are only loosely linked by their plot structures, wherein a power-hungry immigrant named Tony works his way up from dispensable grunt, to hitman, to underworld kingpin. As he does so, he takes his boss’ girlfriend, kills his sister’s lover out of incestuous jealousy, and destroys the lives of himself and everyone around him in the hunt for the limitless wealth and power that he feels entitled to.
Each film is led by a grandstanding, scenery-chewing performance that foregrounds the character’s accent and violent personality: Paul Muni plays the Italian Tony Camonte in the 1932 movie (with a nice-a theeck accent), Al Pacino the Cuban Tony Montana in 1983 (who doesn’t leave a single ‘fuck’ unsaid). The lack of any hint of inner life in the remorseless gangster positions the films as distanced allegory. The political context of that allegory is very similar. Both films address concerns of criminal contingencies in immigrants while making it painstakingly clear that they don’t mean to imply that all immigrants are murderers, both films nonetheless adopt a stance of righteous outrage against organized crime, and upon initial release both lead to worries that their extreme and stylized violence would be imitated by wannabe crime lords (in each case, this somewhat came to pass).
But the moments that distinguish their aim as consciously politically relevant are a pair of sequences that are among the least violent or plot-important in either film. Just as Tony Camonte’s crimewave is reaching its peak, Hawks’ film shows two scenes in which anonymous characters debate how society can best respond to organized crime. First, a police officer chastises a newspaper reporter who hunts for a story on Camonte; he says that this leads to public romanticization and glorification of gangsters. Second, a newspaper magnate fields complaints of his paper’s heavy crime coverage. He claims that awareness is better than ignorance and that exposure can only be bad for the underworld. Without saying so directly, Hawks shows how confused and contradictory public responses to crime can be.
DePalma’s film takes this a step further: the social criticism comes from the mouth of the monster himself, Tony Montana. While sitting in a Jacuzzi and watching TV, he rants to his wife and his right-hand man about the banks — which have just raised their rates for money laundering — as emblematic of a system that rewards exploitation. “You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked.” His wife quickly points out that he has bought into this system himself. A news commentator appears to stress that he does not believe that legalizing cocaine will eradicate organized crime, and Montana — a coke kingpin himself — calls him and other media figures liars who court public interest instead of speaking honestly.
These scenes’ underlying accusations of social hypocrisy are more or less in tune with one another, but what distinguishes the DePalma remake from the original is its integration of Tony’s opinions. Ulterior motives always distort discourse on public peace and unity, but the ’83 film suggests that the only ones with a clear picture of the problem are the criminals themselves, because they have followed the logical course of actions and priorities that their culture and economy have prepared them for.
