Our tour through Hollywood’s pre-Code precinct takes a left turn into the dangerous district of organized crime with Scarface (1932), directed by Howard Hawks and starring Paul Muni in a ferocious performance as a low-level gangster, Tony Carmonte, who rises to top mob boss. Along with Warner Brothers’ Little Caesar and Public Enemy, the independently-produced Scarface was the most violent film of the era. All three were big hits, much to the alarm of the social guardians of the era.
In his pre-screening talk, Michael gives an overview of the genre conventions established in the early gangster movies and examines director Howard Hawks’s stylish and symbolic-laced cinematic presentation, an outlier in his filmography as a whole.
Its seminal importance in the early gangster movie cycle outweighed only by its still exhilarating brilliance… Hawks and head screenwriter Ben Hecht were after an equation between Capone and the Borgias: they provided so much contentious meat for the censors amid the violent crackle of Chicago gangland war that they managed to slip a subsidiary incest theme through unnoticed. Two years’ haggling ended with the subtitle “Shame of a Nation” being appended.
Time Out
2:00 pm
2:30 pm
Michael van den Bos
Howard Hawks
Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, George Raft, Boris Karloff
USA
1932
English
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Credits
Screenwriter
Ben Hecht, W. R. Burnett, John Lee Mahin, Seton I. Miller
Cinematography
Lee Garmes, L. W. O’Connell
Editor
Edward Curtiss
Also in This Series
SIN! SEX! SHOCK! SCANDAL! Welcome to the sordid cinema of Pre-Code Hollywood! Classic film scholar Michael van den Bos is your tour guide on a 5-part trek through the seamier, steamier and sinister side of Hollywood movies from the early 1930s.
Trouble in Paradise
Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play lovers and thieves attempting to fleece the chic owner of a French perfume company, played by Kay Francis. What ensues is a modern ménage à trois in the most elegant, innuendo filled film comedy of all time.