I have always wondered why businesses ever advertise they are under new management. That doesn’t seem to me to be incentive to patronize an establishment, unless you really hated the old manager.
The social club where all the gangsters hang out in 1932’s Scarface is constantly under new management, which is just as well, as the proprietor’s name is painted on the glass in its door and that constantly needs to be replaced. Paul Muni is the first person we see get the opportunity to break that glass, but it will happen again later. And the person at the top of the crime organization running the club keeps changing. With each of those changings of the guard, Muni is closer to running the south side of Chicago himself. Better watch out, bad bad Leroy Brown.
His first move was to whack the current head of the gangs. That’s pretty harsh, as Muni was that guy’s bodyguard. The scene of the hit is our introduction to our lead, and it is memorable and creepy. All we see of him is his shadow as he creeps up on his boss as the man talks on a telephone in an empty club. Muni is so unconcerned that he is even whistling.
Alas, nothing else our lead will do over the course of the runtime is as impactful as this. I don’t recall seeing Muni in anything before watching this, and I found his performance weirdly hammy. I’ll acknowledge he was breaking new ground and he could not anticipate the directions such actors as Bogie, Cagney or Robinson would take such a role in the following years. Still, it is strange to see him mug so shamelessly, making his most severe expressions look quite comical. I also realize this was just three years into what is described as the sound era of film, and his type of acting would have been more appropriate in the preceding silent period. It also doesn’t I think he resembles Moe the Bartender from The Simpsons.
Even if I didn’t fully believe Muni as a gangster, the picture does not hold back in the horrific violence he either administers personally or encourages others to commit. Nobody will get any limbs chainsawed off, like in the 1983 remake, but I’ll concede I found the quantity and strength of such content here to be quite startling. If anybody is unfamiliar with the pre-code era which this represents, just watch this and then compare to any picture of the genre in the first decade or two after the guidelines went into effect in 1935.
Another sure sign you’re watching a pre-code film is the open sexuality. Gangsters’ molls are clearly living with them outside of marriage. Muni has a creepy, and clearly incestuous, obsession with his sister (Ann Dvorak). One aspect shared by the women in this movie is they are all very much in the “flapper” style of the era, and apparently from a time before breasts were invented.
If there is one aspect of Muni’s character I found interesting, it is his aspiration to become increasingly sophisticated as he becomes richer. He doesn’t even realize he is misunderstanding some of the new words he encounters in his new social circle. Consider this exchange he has with Karen Morley: “How do you like this place?” “It’s kinda gaudy, don’t you think?” “I know! It’s nice, right?” He also doesn’t know what the word “effeminate” means, and thinks Morley means it as a compliment. Later, he will say of his lawyer at a court appearance, “He was late with the hideous corpse”, instead of habeas corpus.
It is also interesting to see Boris Karloff as the top rival gangster. I am quite a fan of that actor, and am always impressed by his ability to so thoroughly lose himself in a wide variety of roles. Alas, the Irish accent he is supposed to have is rather dodgy. Also, there’s one scene I can’t seem to shake and that is when we see him bowling. I didn’t which aspect was weirder, watching Karloff bowl or that it is a mob kingpin plowing through the pins.
A minor character I especially liked is Vince Barnett as a fellow gangster and Muni’s secretary. Alas, Barnett doesn’t have any of the skills for such a position, and is so frustrated by telephones that he almost pumps one full of lead at one point. One odd aspect of this performance is this comic relief guy also commits some homicides, and it isn’t telephones he whacks. It becomes a tad difficult to laugh at this clown, when we see him killing people. It is one of the reason why Pennywise doesn’t do children’s birthday parties, though that would be interesting to see.
I can respect Scarface more than I actually enjoyed it. At least, I enjoyed it more than the de Palma take on the material. It might be interesting to see who could go more over-the-top, Pacino or Muni. As for toughness, I think I would actually side with Muni. There is one moment here where he really sold me on his character, and that is when he strikes a match off the badge of a cop. I don’t recall seeing Pacino doing anything that cool.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Starring Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray