Post by rra on Jan 3, 2008 14:34:14 GMT -5
SCARFACE: THE SHAME OF A NATION (1932) - ****1/2
I was going to review Brian DePalma's SCARFACE, but I'll save that blow for another day. Let's instead go from the Cocaine Decade to the Alcohol Decade, when American Prohibition was repealed to make desperate commerce during the Great Depression, and to give the people something to wash away their daily fears of starvation and unemployment.
This is where mega-millionaire Howard Hughes was playing down in Hollywood. As a director, he shot the box-office hit HELL'S ANGELS and as a producer, he was the independent studio in town. He had the cash to survive without the studios, the egomania to go for broke, and (sometimes) let the filmmakers do their job.
For his production of Maurice Cooper's novel about a beer-baron criminal, Hughes hired a Chicago journalist-turned-scriptwriter in Ben Hecht and a talented-if-unsatisfied young director in Howard Hawks.
Hawks started directing in the last days of the silent-cinema epoch, and helmed his last picture in 1970 with RIO LOBO. A true studio-system filmmaker, Hawks worked for six decades as a mis-mash shooter of many genres. Westerns, Comedies, Musicals, Film-Noir, Epic War Dramas, you name it. His major breakthrough though would come from this entry for the gangster genre.
Hawks reportedly was a man notorious for telling elaborate lies or for (greatly) exaggerating the truth, and in that regard the same can be said about his SCARFACE.
It's a dramatic cinema myth about the Prohibition-Era in Chicago, based off real (and very deadly) personalities, and their daily "business" ranging from murder in the daytime to attending lavish parties at night. It's a great lie based on incredible truth.
The time, place, and ethnicity may be different, but if you've seen the remake, it's exactly the same story.
Paul Muni is a hoodlum-soldier immigrant in who bombs and guns down the competition, but he wants more. He strives to live the American dream, for the world is yours for the taking. He and his side-man see a great opportunity in the bootlegging game, but their boss is too conservative and soft for them.
They topple him in a coup de tat, and rule Chicago. But after victory, there is boredom and the great strain of the crown is wearing down on Muni and his family.....
Much like the remake, Hawks' SCARFACE was blasted by critics for its level of violence unseen within American cinema at the time. Yet as peeved as they were over these gangsters were using their "Chicago Typewriters" to play the game, what shocked the censors more was that Hawks shot Muni as a compelling, if not defendable, hero.
In this age of PUBLIC ENEMY and LITTLE CAESAR, Paul Muni is completely different from James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson in that he is never sorry about his criminal ways....but only that he lost.
What's most fascinating about the original SCARFACE is that in half the running time of DePalma's remake, Hawks tells the same captivating story and delivers an incredibl quota of action that must have been insanely incredible for that decade.
But inbetween the bullets flying and bodies dropping, Hawks placates the "X" visual motiff subtly and not during the murders like the oranges in the GODFATHER pictures. With Hawks, this "X" is a death omen that like a couple going off to screw in a slasher flick.....you're screwed.
Yet as surprisingly great as Hawks' classic is, we were denied an even greater film because of the sissy fits from the censors.
Some violence was trimmed down, new scenes were shot to make clear to the American WASPs that not all Italians are criminal scumbags, the SHAME OF A NATION by-line was added, and the text prologue that makes this unintentionally begin like a bad after-school special.
A good example of what was lost is that the hero's mother loves her brood, in spite of his profession. Certainly that's more realistic for that, or any, time in the history of crime, when such actions were defended or explained away from within that clique.
Funny enough, the same slicers ignored the scenes suggesting incenst between the hero and his sister. So some fired "bullets" aren't so bad after all....
Trust me, I love the DePalma remake, I really do and its among my favorite movies. But its the true shame of the nation that the superior original is frankly ignored in favor of the hip-hop-sponsored Pacino version, because what was true in 1983 was true over 76 years ago.
The world is yours.....but not for long.
.
