Scarface (1932)

THE ORIGINAL "SCARFACE"! I must admit that I wasn't aware of there being an original Scarface from 1932 when I first saw the 1983 remake starring Pacino. Only later after I saw the special edition DVD of the 1983 film, I realized that it is, in fact, a remake! Al Pacino is interviewed in one of the features and he mentions about Paul Muni's performance. Some footage from the original is also shown. I've been wanting to see this original 'Scarface' ever since. It was a strange but satisfying experience seeing Paul Muni do way back then in 1932, what Pacino did in the 1983 remake! The story, loosely based on the life of real-life gangster Al Capone, is pretty much the same for all those who are familiar with the remake. Some of the key scenes, characters and even some lines of dialog in the remake are a direct lift from this film! Only the setting has been changed of course. The business is booze, not drugs. The central character is not a Cuban refugee, but an Italian gangster! The time is the 30s, not 80s..and so on! Paul Muni stars as Antonio 'Tony' Camonte who starts under Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins) who has taken over the South Side to carry on with his illegal booze trade, after he gets rid of the leading South Side mob boss, Costillo. But little does he know that Tony is a power-hungry, ambitious young mobster who will stop at nothing for a quick rise right up to the top. He is a man who won't take orders from a boss for very long and wants to do something of his own. So then it begins. Tony sets out on a murderous rampage and spreads his wings like wildfire across all the parts of the city, killing anyone who comes in the way. He even refuses to follow the orders of Johnny Lovo at a point of time. All the while by his side he has his loyal buddy Guino Ronaldo (George Raft) and a bumbling Angelo (Vince Barnett) as his secretary. The fast-paced machine-gun mayhem in this film almost never lets up in the crisp 90 minutes running time of the film. Parallely, there are the story angles of Tony's overprotective and seemingly incestuous demeanor towards his sister Francesca (Ann Dvorak), and that of his own pursuit of Johnny Lovo's girlfriend, Poppy (Karen Morley). Great acting skills displayed by most of the cast apart from Paul Muni, of course, who is wildly over-the-top, almost to the extent of hilarity, but in a positive sense! He is an absolute pleasure to watch as he hogs the screen. He has clearly had a lot of fun portraying this character, just as Pacino did in the remake. Penned by Ben Hecht and superbly directed by Howard Hawks,"Scarface" is a landmark in the gangster film genre. Highly recommended!