Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932)

Howard Hawks is a director I’m starting to find more and more fascinating. Compared to many other Hollywood directors or films from the times, Hawks seem almost like a minimalist. He doesn’t use too much music, uses a lot of long and wide shots, and few cuts, especially avoiding close-ups and shot-reverse-shots. I watched the remake of Scarface featuring Al Pacino, and liked it at the time, but in retro perspective hasn’t remained much with me. So I was quite excited about watching this one.

Also compared to most Hollywood films I’ve seen from this period, Scarface is quite brutal and violent. The film throughout escalates into violence, shooting and killing. It is refreshing to see this kind of film from the early days of cinema. It is also quite astounding that the film had such great quality in cinematography and sound despite the fact that it was made all the way back in 1932. After silent movies disappeared in Hollywood, the quality of the films dropped, due to the limits of the sound recording equipment at the time. Scarface though shows that the technology has started to manage to improve the quality to allow good filmmaking not worrying about the sound recording. Hawks manages to create a strange relationship between the audience and the main character, while he is a murderer, beats his sister and is generally a bastard; one still is swayed to empathise with him, and his struggle to rise above his superiors. The ending is also quite astounding, mixing many different emotions, and the lead character’s insanity rose to a manic height.

But, Hawk’s great directing also distances the audience from the action on screen. The long takes, the wide shots and few close-ups leaves us at a distance, not allowing the audience to become too close to the characters. But there is still a feeling of sadness throughout the film, and coldness to the business of the gangsters. In the beginning of the film there is a title card which is talking about how horrible the gangsters are and that it is up the people and the government to clean the streets of criminals. This gives the film a bit of a political context, which is something I usually don’t enjoy; however, this doesn’t become too apparent throughout the rest of the film. Also there should be given some credit to the star of the film Paul Muni, who plays the lead character, Tony. He portrays the coldness of the gangster, never flinching nor being scared of the thought of killing, did often almost seeming excited about it. This adds greatly upon Hawks cold and detached directing.

I really liked Scarface; it’s a great exploration of the gangster environment, as well as Hawks great directing and the performance of Paul Muni. I think this is the best film I’ve seen by Howard Hawk, and I am really enjoying exploring these old black & white Hollywood films, and Hawks is a director I am certainly going to explore further. I still prefer John Huston slightly, but Hawks is impressing me more and more through the films I see by him.