Director: Brian De Palma
Writers: Oliver Stone, Howard Hawks, Ben Hecht, Armitage Trail
Photography: John A. Alonzo
Music: Giorgio Moroder
Editors: Gerald B. Greenberg, David Ray
Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia, Paul Shenar, Harris Yulin, F. Murray Abraham, Miriam Colon, Richard Belzer, Dennis Holahan, Michael Alldredge, Mark Margolis
I was surprised, perhaps 25 years ago, when I noticed that director Brian De Palma’s 1983 homage to Hollywood gangster cinema had a lot of fans. Scarface appeared to be significant for bro wannabe gangsters, no surprise—but also cineastes of various stripes. Glenn Kenny just published a book about it, for example. For a long time I wondered how they could all be so wrong. My first impression was not a good one. My takeaways (and pretty much all I focused on) were a gruesome early scene involving a chainsaw in a motel shower, and then the last hour of a picture that runs nearly three, where the operatics and scenery-chewing reach various spectacular yet ludicrous climaxes. Yes, this includes Tony Montana (Al Pacino) sitting in his monogrammed chair at his desk piled with a mound of cocaine, into which he periodically bobs his head and comes up with a frosty powdery nose-tip. The emptiness of gangster life, as always, is appalling. But making it so buffoonish is something else again. Hoo-yah!
It took me this long to get back to Scarface, such was my recoiling reaction, even given that I might be a little more indulgent of De Palma’s prolific work than some others I know. But a lot of serious people continue to have a lot of serious things to say about Scarface, so I made a point of looking again. And yeah, it’s not bad—certainly stands up to gangster pictures of the ‘70s and ‘80s as well as the originals from the ‘30s. Not that, full disclosure, I really like gangster pictures as such that much—it seems to be kind of an overachieving genre. But Scarface fits, it belongs—it’s the story of a rise and fall, with the usual self-serving moral qualms. The chainsaw scene now seems more like the kind of wanton ultraviolence we are more used to as entertainment. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and I am saying it’s still hard to watch, but the scene does what it’s supposed to do in this movie, in terms of plot and character development. And the last hour—well, we’ll get to the last hour.
I was surprised, perhaps 25 years ago, when I noticed that director Brian De Palma’s 1983 homage to Hollywood gangster cinema had a lot of fans. Scarface appeared to be significant for bro wannabe gangsters, no surprise—but also cineastes of various stripes. Glenn Kenny just published a book about it, for example. For a long time I wondered how they could all be so wrong. My first impression was not a good one. My takeaways (and pretty much all I focused on) were a gruesome early scene involving a chainsaw in a motel shower, and then the last hour of a picture that runs nearly three, where the operatics and scenery-chewing reach various spectacular yet ludicrous climaxes. Yes, this includes Tony Montana (Al Pacino) sitting in his monogrammed chair at his desk piled with a mound of cocaine, into which he periodically bobs his head and comes up with a frosty powdery nose-tip. The emptiness of gangster life, as always, is appalling. But making it so buffoonish is something else again. Hoo-yah!
It took me this long to get back to Scarface, such was my recoiling reaction, even given that I might be a little more indulgent of De Palma’s prolific work than some others I know. But a lot of serious people continue to have a lot of serious things to say about Scarface, so I made a point of looking again. And yeah, it’s not bad—certainly stands up to gangster pictures of the ‘70s and ‘80s as well as the originals from the ‘30s. Not that, full disclosure, I really like gangster pictures as such that much—it seems to be kind of an overachieving genre. But Scarface fits, it belongs—it’s the story of a rise and fall, with the usual self-serving moral qualms. The chainsaw scene now seems more like the kind of wanton ultraviolence we are more used to as entertainment. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and I am saying it’s still hard to watch, but the scene does what it’s supposed to do in this movie, in terms of plot and character development. And the last hour—well, we’ll get to the last hour.
Once I realized Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay, my first impulse was to blame the excesses on him, because the record largely shows he doesn’t seem to be able to help himself from overdoing things. But De Palma has much the same problem, mitigated perhaps with some propensity for cheese. Giorgio Moroder’s Scarface soundtrack largely sticks to inserting his productions of Elizabeth Daily, Debbie Harry, Amy Holland, and others into the scenes of late-disco early-‘80s Miami nightclub land. Open shirt bare chest is the fundamental aesthetic. When called on to deliver the cheese, Moroder is at least as good as De Palma’s frequent collaborator Pino Donaggio, with a suitably dark and swoony “Tony’s Theme” or the treacle served up when we first see gangster moll Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer).
At one point Tony Montana sees a blimp flashing an airline advertising message: “The World Is Yours.” This, of course, is a lift from the original 1932 Scarface with Paul Muni, directed by Howard Hawks (and Richard Rosson) and written by Ben Hecht (and others). De Palma’s version is based on it and mimics it in terms of structure but is rarely actually reminiscent of it (and I only looked at it again a few weeks ago). The setting in this Scarface is Florida in the ‘80s, and the gangsters are from the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which Fidel Castro emptied his prisons of some of the worst to mix with fleeing refugees. A lengthy disclaimer at picture’s end sanctimoniously notes that not all Cuban refugees are like Tony Montana and his crew. De Palma is at pains to honor gangster cinema of the ‘30s and dedicates his picture to Hawks and Hecht.
At the same time, the picture is dotted with any number of hey-that-guy figures familiar from TV: Robert Loggia (with appearances in Police Woman, The Rockford Files, The Six Million Dollar Man, S.W.A.T., and others), Harris Yulin (Barnaby Jones, Little House on the Prairie, Police Woman, S.W.A.T.), Dennis Holahan (Dallas, General Hospital, The Love Boat, The Rockford Files), Michael Alldredge (Alice, The A-Team, Barnaby Jones, Lou Grant), and others. This might have been a matter of budget but it also fits De Palma’s sensibilities. They are all professionals but not really above-average players. It’s a weird sensation as the picture wavers in and out of scenes that feel like TV set-pieces—comforting and cheesy by turns, perhaps intended to soothe the ongoing relentless brutalities.
De Palma’s Scarface grows less interesting as Tony Montana grows more powerful and more depraved, which takes up a lot of the last hour and is more or less what critics like me remember most. It really does get ridiculous—almost comical, which I think is at odds with the high drama, an undermining tension, like a tire leaking air, that is never really resolved. But De Palma is once again using the full moviemaker toolkit (now with steadicam!) to knit together scenes of extraordinary tension and suspense. There are many points where you just can’t take your eyes off it. Don’t miss, for example, the visionary hallucinatory Octavio the Clown, a nightclub act that accompanies Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.”
The obvious star of this Scarface is Al Pacino, and if there’s one thing we know by now about Pacino it is that he loves to perform. Hoo-yah! In many ways both the picture and Pacino go bonkers out of control with irrational exuberance, but the totality of the spectacle is something to behold. Between De Palma’s consummate probing directing style (constantly paying homage and making you nervous all at once) and Pacino’s often mesmerizing sequences, there’s a lot to take in here. I can even see where it might reward looking at more than once.
At one point Tony Montana sees a blimp flashing an airline advertising message: “The World Is Yours.” This, of course, is a lift from the original 1932 Scarface with Paul Muni, directed by Howard Hawks (and Richard Rosson) and written by Ben Hecht (and others). De Palma’s version is based on it and mimics it in terms of structure but is rarely actually reminiscent of it (and I only looked at it again a few weeks ago). The setting in this Scarface is Florida in the ‘80s, and the gangsters are from the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which Fidel Castro emptied his prisons of some of the worst to mix with fleeing refugees. A lengthy disclaimer at picture’s end sanctimoniously notes that not all Cuban refugees are like Tony Montana and his crew. De Palma is at pains to honor gangster cinema of the ‘30s and dedicates his picture to Hawks and Hecht.
At the same time, the picture is dotted with any number of hey-that-guy figures familiar from TV: Robert Loggia (with appearances in Police Woman, The Rockford Files, The Six Million Dollar Man, S.W.A.T., and others), Harris Yulin (Barnaby Jones, Little House on the Prairie, Police Woman, S.W.A.T.), Dennis Holahan (Dallas, General Hospital, The Love Boat, The Rockford Files), Michael Alldredge (Alice, The A-Team, Barnaby Jones, Lou Grant), and others. This might have been a matter of budget but it also fits De Palma’s sensibilities. They are all professionals but not really above-average players. It’s a weird sensation as the picture wavers in and out of scenes that feel like TV set-pieces—comforting and cheesy by turns, perhaps intended to soothe the ongoing relentless brutalities.
De Palma’s Scarface grows less interesting as Tony Montana grows more powerful and more depraved, which takes up a lot of the last hour and is more or less what critics like me remember most. It really does get ridiculous—almost comical, which I think is at odds with the high drama, an undermining tension, like a tire leaking air, that is never really resolved. But De Palma is once again using the full moviemaker toolkit (now with steadicam!) to knit together scenes of extraordinary tension and suspense. There are many points where you just can’t take your eyes off it. Don’t miss, for example, the visionary hallucinatory Octavio the Clown, a nightclub act that accompanies Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.”
The obvious star of this Scarface is Al Pacino, and if there’s one thing we know by now about Pacino it is that he loves to perform. Hoo-yah! In many ways both the picture and Pacino go bonkers out of control with irrational exuberance, but the totality of the spectacle is something to behold. Between De Palma’s consummate probing directing style (constantly paying homage and making you nervous all at once) and Pacino’s often mesmerizing sequences, there’s a lot to take in here. I can even see where it might reward looking at more than once.
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