November 19, 2010: Scarface (1983)
If I happened to be a child of the 1920s, then I might have grown up under the influence of the 1932 incarnation of Scarface, a film accused of glorifying the gangster lifestyle and which suffered censorship in its day as a result but has gone on to become respected as a historically significant American film. But I happen to be a child of the 1970s, so Brian de Palma’s 1983 remake of Scarface is the version on which I was brought up.
Now, that’s not to say I have always been a big fan of Scarface. I was of course too young to have seen it upon its original release, but the home video boom of the 1980s brought this and many other films to young eyeballs years before they had the maturity to properly process them. I have seen Scarface periodically over the years but never elevated it to the heroic cult status some kids do. On the surface, the film is ripe for imitation and quotation, but perhaps these youngsters aren’t getting its message.
Scarface centres on the life of Tony Montana (played by Al Pacino in what he says is one of his favourite film roles that he’s played), a fictional Cuban refugee who arrived in Miami during the not so fictional so-called Cuban Crime Wave of 1980 when Fidel Castro allowed people to freely leave the country but added newly released prisoners into the mix of people flowing illegally across the border into the US. This created an explosive situation in Miami as the dregs of Cuban society were all trying to make their way in the US, without any moral restrictions on how they were going to do that. Tony commits a murder inside a refugee camp in return for his arranged release, and once he’s out, he gets into the drug dealing business right away, working for the man who got him released. Tony aspires to be a kingpin instead of a foot soldier, and works his way up, but it’s clear from the start that he’s destined to fall.
There’s plenty more to the story in this nearly three-hour epic, but the key points are Tony’s relationship with his best friend Manny, as well as those with the women in his life – his sister and the woman he will eventually marry. Tony is ambitious, but impulsive and a bit sloppy, and that colours his every interaction. He is smart and can see the big picture and the politics that define the drug-dealing world in which he exists, and that makes him a great negotiator with the powerful men he encounters, but he is too proud and too hasty and only the men who can restrain those traits are the ones who survive for a long time in that business. But the complexity of the Tony Montana character comes from this paradox, that his guts can get him noticed and get things done, but they can also make him overstep his bounds and get in trouble. The kids who had/have Scarface posters on their dorm room walls see Tony as an underworld hero, but it could be argued just as easily and perhaps more convincingly that he’s simply a punk. He’s an insightful guy – at the peak of his power he sits in a fancy restaurant with his wife and his best friend and wonders aloud what he’s doing all this for, since all he’s getting is more money and more luxury and more stuff, and the aggravation is increasing as well. He knows in his heart that there’s a limit to how big a hot tub needs to be – but at the same time he’s compelled, as are many men of power, to always get more, to always defeat someone else and take their share. He knows that it’s not possible for it to end well, but he seems to accept that he is who he is, which is why when his time comes, he definitely won’t go down without a fight but there’s no question in his mind about the fact that he’s going down.
And what of the iconic images from Scarface? Even those who haven’t seen the film are probably aware of the infamous chainsaw scene, which isn’t as grisly as it is often imagined to be but certainly includes its fair share of blood. It’s a narratively important scene, though, since early in the movie it shows the character of Tony Montana facing imminent death, and even at such a moment, he is composed and still arrogant and not fearing for his life so much as he is enraged that he was bested by people he feels are his inferiors. When he escapes, his anger exceeds his tact as he guns down his would-be murderer in the middle of the street in broad daylight. Another set of images widely known from Scarface are Tony’s over-the-top cocaine indulgences, arranging a huge line of it roughly with his hands before snorting, and later on burying his entire face in a pile of it. Interestingly, in all of the snorting scenes there is something placed between the camera and Tony so we don’t see the actual snorting, a device which I found to be glaringly obvious, but I suppose it’s an attempt to keep from glorifying the act any more than it needs to be. And of course there’s the unforgettable “Say hello to my little friend” line from the climax of the film, as Tony makes his final stand with his M16 with attached grenade launcher, which has become the symbol of Scarface’s ultraviolence and Tony Montana’s chutzpah. However, what people don’t usually mention is that three minutes later, Tony tumbles lifeless into a reflecting pool in the great hall of his house. But he went out on his own terms.
I’d like to mention a few more important points about Scarface. Key to the success of this story are the strong and real female characters inhabiting this chauvinistic world. Michelle Pfeiffer as Elvira, a drug lord’s girlfriend and Tony’s object of desire (and later wife), along with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Gina, Tony’s sister, are the only people in Tony’s life who dare to stand up to him, to really contradict him and challenge him in a way he can’t overcome with violence or scheming. He respects them in a certain way, because while he believes he can defeat any man, he somehow doesn’t stand a chance with these women. He tries to control Gina but knows that he really can’t – he can only threaten and control the men she interacts with. And Elvira proves his equal in stubbornness and perceptiveness. He’s up front with her right from the start, saying that he likes her and he doesn’t plan to let her get away, and she is immediately attracted to his confidence and his respectful approach, which she probably doesn’t experience very much in the drug-soaked world she lives in. Of course, they have a rocky relationship and marriage, but it’s partly because they are both such strong personalities and increasingly because they are both under the influence of drugs and picking on the flaws in each other that they wish they didn’t have themselves.
Another noteworthy point is that Scarface was written by Oliver Stone. This was before his breakthrough directorial effort on Salvador (1986) which led to two directing Oscars, for Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), but his magnetic screenwriting talent was well developed already by the time of Scarface, and in fact he had previously won an Oscar for the screenplay of Midnight Express (1978). I liken this career path to that of Quentin Tarantino, who was writing stories and screenplays for successful films as his directing career was in the process of taking off, with the two men’s career trajectories actually intersecting on Natural Born Killers (1994) for which Tarantino wrote the story and Stone co-wrote screenplay and directed.
Also fascinating is the influence of Scarface on what was the fourth Grand Theft Auto video game, Vice City, which takes styling cues from both Scarface and the TV series Miami Vice to create a colourful but dangerous world of crime set in the 1980s.
Scarface is a must-see piece of the pop-culture puzzle of the 1980s, a film which wasn’t particularly appreciated on its initial release but has enough entertainment value and enough depth of character and story to have resonated with generations of youngsters and with more and more critics as time goes on.
Early 1980s gangster culture writ large.