An ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.An ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.An ambitious and nearly insane violent gangster climbs the ladder of success in the mob, but his weaknesses prove to be his downfall.
- Awards
- 2 wins
Henry Armetta
- Pietro - Barber
- (uncredited)
Gus Arnheim
- Orchestra Leader
- (uncredited)
Eugenie Besserer
- Citizens Committee Member
- (uncredited)
Maurice Black
- Jim - Headwaiter
- (uncredited)
William A. Boardway
- Nightclub Patron
- (uncredited)
William Burress
- Judge (alternate ending)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaScreenwriter Ben Hecht was a former Chicago journalist familiar with the city's Prohibition-era gangsters, including Al Capone. During the filming, Hecht returned to his Los Angeles hotel room one night to find two Capone torpedoes waiting for him. The gangsters demanded to know if the movie was about Capone. Hecht assured them it wasn't, saying that the character Tony Camonte was based on gangsters like "Big" Jim Colosimo and Charles Dion O'Bannion. "Then why is the movie called Scarface?" one of the hoods demanded. "Everyone will think it's about Capone!" "That's the reason," said Hecht. "If you call the movie Scarface (1932), people will think it's about Capone and come to see it. It's part of the racket we call show business." The Capone hoods, who appreciated the value of a scam, left the hotel placated.
- GoofsThe scene Tony pushes and punches the man who refuses to obey Johnny Lovo in First Ward Social Club, it's clearly seen that Tony actually punches the man's palm.
- Quotes
Tony Camonte: Listen, Little Boy, in this business there's only one law you gotta follow to keep out of trouble: Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doing it.
- Crazy credits"This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. Every incident in this picture is the reproduction of an actual occurence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government: "What are you going to do about it?". The government is your government. What are YOU going to do about it?
- Alternate versionsDue to censorship requirements in several states, a second ending was shot after the film was finished, in which Camonte doesn't try an escape, but is sentenced to death and finally executed on the gallows. This alternate ending was shown only during the original 1932 theatrical run in certain states. All prints, home video, and television versions in current circulation use director Howard Hawks' ending, in which Camonte tries to escape and is shot down. The DVD includes the alternate ending as a bonus feature.
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1994)
Featured review
Unusual for HH
As other have accurately pointed out, this is an unusual film for Hawks. For one thing, there really is no hero. Muni looks rather anthropoid in this movie. He seems to live in a dump and is content to let his mother and sister live in a similar dump. He throws his mother around too, the swine. There is little of the male solidarity we've come to expect from Hawks. Everyone in the film seems manipulative.
There are a couple of other uncharacteristic features here. Some fancy editing takes place as a chattering tommy gun seems to blow away the pages of a calendar. And the later Hawks would have considered the symbolic use of all those Xs to be pretentious. (Hawks claimed he got the idea from a photo in a tabloid newspaper of a murder scene after the body had been removed, but an X was entered into the pic to denote the body's position.) Of course many of his characters had little quirks, rubbing their noses with a finger or whatever, but they were behavioral touches rather than artifactual. After this film he seems to have given up on built-in symbolic oddities and gone with George Raft's coin flipping instead.
But, the main plot aside, Tony Camonte's attitude towards his sister, a characteristically non-obedient babe with melanic eye rings like a panda's, is straightforwardly covert. I've never been sure he knew exactly what he was doing with forbidden impulses like incest or homosexuality. I mean, the guy was from Goshen, Indiana! He didn't know from Freud. As he once put it in an interview, "They attribute all these things to me. . . . It's completely unconscious." Ann Dvorak, as the sister, does a mean kootchy kootchy for Raft in the nightclub vestibule, by the way.
This is definitely worth catching, although it doesn't seem to be shown much on TV. It belongs with Little Caesar and Public Enemy as one of the films to establish an entire genre.
There are a couple of other uncharacteristic features here. Some fancy editing takes place as a chattering tommy gun seems to blow away the pages of a calendar. And the later Hawks would have considered the symbolic use of all those Xs to be pretentious. (Hawks claimed he got the idea from a photo in a tabloid newspaper of a murder scene after the body had been removed, but an X was entered into the pic to denote the body's position.) Of course many of his characters had little quirks, rubbing their noses with a finger or whatever, but they were behavioral touches rather than artifactual. After this film he seems to have given up on built-in symbolic oddities and gone with George Raft's coin flipping instead.
But, the main plot aside, Tony Camonte's attitude towards his sister, a characteristically non-obedient babe with melanic eye rings like a panda's, is straightforwardly covert. I've never been sure he knew exactly what he was doing with forbidden impulses like incest or homosexuality. I mean, the guy was from Goshen, Indiana! He didn't know from Freud. As he once put it in an interview, "They attribute all these things to me. . . . It's completely unconscious." Ann Dvorak, as the sister, does a mean kootchy kootchy for Raft in the nightclub vestibule, by the way.
This is definitely worth catching, although it doesn't seem to be shown much on TV. It belongs with Little Caesar and Public Enemy as one of the films to establish an entire genre.
helpful•174
- rmax304823
- Jan 23, 2002
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Scarface: The Shame of the Nation
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $1,308,000
- Runtime1 hour 33 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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![Ann Dvorak, Paul Muni, and Osgood Perkins in Scarface (1932)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYmMxZTU2ZDUtM2Y1MS00ZWFmLWJlN2UtNzI0OTJiOTYzMTk3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjUxODE0MDY@._V1_QL75_UX90_CR0,2,90,133_.jpg)