The Favorites - Scarface (#38)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Scarface (1983/USA/dir. Brian De Palma) appeared at #38 on my original list.

What it is • The only film on this list to remake another film on this list, Scarface updates the story of a ruthless Italian gangster in Prohibition Chicago for the 1980s, transforming Tony Camonte into the Cuban Mariel boatlift refugee Tony Montana and shifting locations to sun-struck, coke-fueled Miami. De Palma steps in for Howard Hawks, while Oliver Stone's screenplay adapts Ben Hecht's original. As might be expected based on that personnel switch, the violent, profanity-laden three-hour update trades economy for excess. In other ways, however, the films share a kindred spirit beyond their largely identical plot points and narrative arcs. Both embrace blunt dialogue and characterizations as quietly clever as they are superficially crude. Both center on larger-than-life performances from studious, serious actors embracing vulgarity and vitality as two sides of the same coin. Both embed their lowbrow pleasures in a sophisticated, imaginative visual style, rich with creative camera movements. The 1983 Scarface also has some distinctive qualities the earlier film lacks: a gorgeous, splashy color palette and an immediately evocative Giorgio Morodor electronic score. The film is gloriously trashy, but also wonderfully-executed and, most importantly, honest in its comprehension of Tony's ferocious desires and the world that flatters and frustrates him. That blimp may proclaim "The World is Yours!" but it will eventually reveal itself to be the Hindenburg.

Why I like it •

The Favorites - Scarface (#72)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. Scarface (1932/USA/dir. Howard Hawks) appeared at #72 on my original list.

What it is • Shot in black-and-white that glistens, and scored with a barrage of crackling machine-gun fire, Scarface is a talkie that exhibits all of the charm of Hollywood's early sound period and few of the drawbacks. Director Howard Hawks employs dozens of clever audiovisual ideas to illustrate the rise of Chicago hoodlum Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) during Prohibition. Many of these inventive techniques put a cinematic gloss on brutal murder: an opening long take that uses suggestive sound and shadow to "depict" the first of many killings; the repetition of Expressionistic "X"'s (created by crossbeams, doorways, and other props) atop dead gangsters; and the whip-pan execution of Camonte's final rival (a clipped, glowering Boris Karloff) as he bowls a perfect strike (which, of course, is marked on the score sheet as an "X"!). Collaborating with writer Ben Hecht (whose "Out of my way, Johnny, I'm gonna spit!" is pure pulp poetry), Hawks borrows from the Borgias to lend Camonte an unnatural feeling for his little sister (Ann Dvorak). Meanwhile, he pursues the moll (Karen Morley) of his boss (Osgood Perkins) whom Camonte will depose in bed, boardroom, and body. Producer Howard Hughes fought his way to big box office earnings through a minefield of censorship and opposition, filming two different endings, adding the subtitle "Shame of a Nation" and most absurdly, shoehorning in an extended sequence in which "upstanding citizen" types speak moralistically into the camera (my favorite character is the out-of-nowhere Italian-American who pops up in a cutaway to intone in a ridiculously exaggerated accent, "He is a disgrace-a to my people!"). Hawks disclaims any responsibility for this passage which stops the film cold not just narratively but aesthetically, shot as it is in a clumsy static wide shot, with poor lighting. But its unintentional hilarity actually complements the surrounding film with its sharp contrast. Scarface is beautiful as hell, but it doesn't make a damn thing look pretty: not the stupidity of its protagonist, not the rather shocking level of violence, not the lust for power of Tony's relentless rise and fall.

Why I like it •

Press Play features my De Palma video w/ Kevin B. Lee interview

My video essay (the online work I'm proudest of in any form) "directed by De Palma", featuring clips from Hi Mom, Carrie and Scarface, has just been highlighted on the video essay site Press Play. It's accompanied by an interview with me, conducted by the great video essayist Kevin B. Lee (fair warning: the video contains strong violent and sexual imagery from Brian De Palma's work, and is NSFW).

Below I've reproduced both the interview and the video, which can also be found on PressPlay.

Searching For Answers 1980 - 1983 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 24

Twenty-fourth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 24: Searching For Answers"

"I just need time to think things over!" "Why is it necessary to have more than this, or to even think about having more than this?" "What did he say?" "We're sick...I think we're dying..." And then there are the scenes with little to no dialogue: an eerie occult ritual led by a beautiful woman, stepped right out of an Egyptian hieroglyph; a moody man pensively staring out the train window, stranger in his own sprawling country; a girl and her boyfriend sharing a note and then awkwardly separating, perhaps for the last time, as cars whiz by on the highway; a globetrotting camera, capturing dogs on an African beach and a traditionally-dressed Japanese standing silently "in the midst of the long moving shadows that the January light throws over the ground of Tokyo." Like "A Violent Release" early in the series, it's simply uncanny, and unexpected, how perfectly all of today's clips merge into a single theme: the quest for answers, and the mixed messages one gets in return.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)