How Howard Hawks’ Scar­face inspired Mar­tin Scorsese

A pro­ces­sion of cars move slow­ly past a restau­rant where gang­ster Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) is flirt­ing with his love inter­est Pop­py (Karen Mor­ley). The pas­sen­gers of those cars open fire with machine guns, wreak­ing hav­oc in the build­ing with round after deaf­en­ing round forc­ing Tony and his com­pan­ions to take cov­er. Most peo­ple would stay root­ed to that spot when faced with such an onslaught. But Tony is no ordi­nary gang­ster. ​“Hey look,” he exclaims, ​“They got machine guns you can car­ry!” before pro­ceed­ing to stand up, fire back, and col­lect the loose weapon of a dead man like a child who has just opened a sur­prise birth­day present.

It’s a scene that is both shock­ing­ly vio­lent and unset­tling for its brazen casu­al­ness – espe­cial­ly so for a film released way back in 1932. Even next to oth­er gang­ster films from the ​‘pre-code’ era, like Lit­tle Cae­sar and The Pub­lic Ene­my, Howard Hawks’ Scar­face, the sto­ry of a rogue (clear­ly based on Al Capone) insti­gat­ing gang war­fare, was scan­dalous. The cen­sors demand­ed rewrites that more explic­it­ly con­demned Tony, includ­ing the addi­tion of a title card that read ​‘Shame of the Nation’ plus an open­ing mes­sage stat­ing: ​‘This pic­ture is an indict­ment of gang rule in America.’

But the pious­ness of these addi­tions couldn’t help but sound arch and sar­cas­tic when jux­ta­posed with the rest of the film’s glee­ful vio­lence. The weapon of choice for most of the gang­sters is the Thomp­son sub­ma­chine gun (the light­weight firearm Tony is excit­ed about being able to car­ry), and it is fired at an exces­sive cadence at an ear-shat­ter­ing vol­ume. It’s not just the vio­lence that was taboo either – Hawks and pro­duc­er Howard Hugh­es even man­aged to get away with bare­ly con­cealed allu­sions to incest, as Tony becomes jeal­ous of any­one who dares to romance his sis­ter Cesca (Ann Dvorak).

The extremes of Scar­face was pushed even fur­ther in Bri­an De Palma’s Al Paci­no-star­ring remake in 1984, but it’s in the gang­ster films of Mar­tin Scors­ese that its lega­cy is most keen­ly felt. Scors­ese has come to vir­tu­al­ly define the gang­ster genre through films like Mean Streets, Good­fel­las and The Depart­ed, and all owe a debt to Scar­face. They are sim­i­lar­ly punc­tu­at­ed by extreme vio­lence; for instance the much-laud­ed sin­gle take of Hen­ry and Karen enter­ing the Copaca­bana in Good­fel­las has the same flu­id qual­i­ty of the tech­ni­cal­ly bold three-minute open­ing shot of Scar­face, which tracks in and out a build­ing where Tony claims his first vic­tim. More explic­it­ly, The Depart­ed see Scors­ese employ the recur­ring ​‘X’ shape that lurks sur­rep­ti­tious­ly in the frame when­ev­er someone’s about to be killed – a strik­ing visu­al motif that appears as every­thing from the shad­ow of a road-sign to the strap­ping of a woman’s dress.

Anoth­er par­al­lel to Scors­ese is the way Scar­face bold­ly com­bines its vio­lence with humour. Nar­rat­ing the doc­u­men­tary ​‘A Per­son­al Jour­ney Through Amer­i­can Movies’, Scors­ese com­ments on how Hawks, ​“was as much a mas­ter of com­e­dy as a mas­ter of action,” and that the film is ​“at times… very fun­ny.” Indeed, what makes the dri­ve-by shoot­ing scene espe­cial­ly dis­arm­ing is that the vio­lence is used to fur­ther a gag about Tony’s use­less sec­re­tary (Vince Bar­nett), who is unable to suc­cess­ful­ly take down a mes­sage for his boss through­out the film, unable in this instance to hear what is being said down the oth­er end of the line over the cacoph­o­ny of bul­lets. In anoth­er scene he has to be held back from shoot­ing the phone when the caller frus­trates him, an absurd­ly futile ges­ture that hilar­i­ous­ly demon­strates how the only res­o­lu­tion to prob­lems these gang­sters know is violence.

This dark­ly com­ic tone doesn’t take the edge off the vio­lence, so much as it fronts up about the fact that there can be an inde­cent thrill to watch­ing onscreen vio­lence, and provoca­tive­ly indulges in that thrill. ​“That world was almost attrac­tive because of its irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” Scors­ese has said, ​“And that was dis­turb­ing” – a descrip­tion that just as accu­rate­ly applies to his own gang­ster films.

But per­haps the main prece­dent Scar­face set was the allure of its dan­ger­ous pro­tag­o­nist. Scors­ese has revealed that his fond­ness for Tony lies in the fact he is a ​“fierce man” and yet ​“you real­ly like the guy. He’s dan­ger­ous, but you actu­al­ly love him.” He’s suave, well-dressed, vain (the first time we encounter him prop­er­ly is him get­ting a mas­sage), cool, wise-crack­ing, ambi­tious and has an impu­dence towards author­i­ty that can’t help but be beguil­ing. Put sim­ply, he is just like the anti-heroes of Scorsese’s work. Indeed, the direc­tor even explained, ​“That’s the same thing I tried to do with the main char­ac­ters in Good­fel­las.” It’s safe to say he suc­ceed­ed in that sense, so too that he may nev­er have done so with­out the blue­print set by Hawks’ aston­ish­ing film.