Further Thoughts on Howard Hawks' Scarface (and In Praise of Robin Wood)

By MATTHEW SORRENTO

I have the privilege of teaching post-secondary film studies, which grants me the ability to repeatedly view works. I teach genre film, and my specialty in the crime genres has me returning to Howard Hawks' Scarface, not the first of the 1930s gangster classics but the most realized and enjoyable. We've heard professors distinguish the classics from the rest: the former reveals new elements with every reading or viewing. (Hamlet, that deep source of philosophy, intrigue, and carnality, is the category's undisputed champ.) I'd argue the same for many popular works, and the original Scarface is no exception.

X Marks the Spot, from the start.

At the birth of serious film criticism, Robin Wood (1931-2009) first took Hitchcock (1965, revisited in 1989) then Howard Hawks (1968) seriously by publishing monographs on each. His project on Hitchcock began with an essay on Psycho, at first rejected by Sight and Sound for taking a prankster project seriously, then welcomed and translated by the French pioneering journal, Cahiers du Cinéma. Both book-length studies were entering fresh territory. Before Wood, the tradition of cinema laid mostly unexplored, save for journalistic criticism and occasional extended works. Wood applied to film the New Criticism approach that he learned at University, as did many English majors in mid-century Britain and America. His readings of Hitchcock and Hawks shows an close eye for ideas and leitmotifs. After coming out as gay, Wood turned politically charged though keeping the tone of his humanist works. Many note the influence of critic Andrew Britton, a former student of Wood's who'd become his mentor's mentor, as integral to Wood's development. Britton, whose works have resurged thanks to a recent collection (edited by Barry Keith Grant and with an introduction by Wood), was an outright theory junkie, a rewarding author to readers who can heft his boulders of argument.

In Wood's essay on Scarface, from the Hawks text and also collected in Silver and Ursini's excellent collection The Gangster Film Reader, the author discusses the film's tendency to reveal crime as the work of innocents. Morality doesn't have much of a presence (even if the coppers had to get the baddies by the end), while the namesake gangster, Tony Camonte, gets some sympathetic treatment.

Reissued by Wayne State UP.

Wood notes the motif of X marking the spot of each hit by Tony, a visual cue that reveals Christian imagery as profane. When the film recreates the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Hawks frames a row of Xs in scaffolding before the victims are forced by hoods dressed as cops to face the wall take a storm of Tommy-gun bullets. The critic rightfully spots the row in the scaffolding, to which Hawks' camera returns after the killing, to underscore the many hits committed on order by Tony. On my recent viewing I noticed how this scene precedes another visual motif of a row. Later, when Tony's sideman, Guino, is visited by the former's sister, Guino has cut out a row of paper dolls. The sister, Ceska, uses the dolls to come on to Guino, which he resists to show allegiance to Tony. When she notes that her brother will be away for a month, the scene ends to begin her and Guino's marriage. Ironically recalling the scaffolding, the row of dolls signifies Guino's choice to marry and build a family, an institution absent from the self-serving criminals and cops of the film. The row of dolls are, in fact, paper thin, since Tony, with incestuous leanings toward his sister, kills his buddy after learning of their involvement (he tragically didn't realizes they were married). Wood later saw marriage and the tradition family unit as a means to contain male and female energy, essentially resulting in displaced neurosis. (See his essay, “The American Family Comedy: From Meet Me in St. Louis to Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” in Wide Angle 2, 1979.) Meanwhile, the conservative institution of marriage meant redemption and salvation to questionables in the early Hollywood cinema. Anyone outright resisting it would perish, likely the victims of self-imposed studio censorship. Marriage almost saves Guino, and begins Tony's downfall.

I find the traditions of genre fascinating, and always yielding new insights in individual films. Wood made the bold call to describe Scarface as a comedy, which makes sense since many of the scenes aim for comic effects and irony of situation. Still Scarface helped solidify the gangster film tradition, which adapted to the times then saw a major revision after the release of Coppola's first two Godfather films. 

Tony meeting his demise.

In Scarface alone, genre commentary appears briefly. When the police chief discusses the moral depravity of the Volstead-breaking gangsters in Chicago, he contrasts them to the shoot-'em-up heroes on the western plains. The latter met head-on, on the street, at high noon, to settle problems with honor. Essentially, he endorses the myth of the west, the right for eastern-borne white men to claim the land from “unofficial inhabitants.” (The idea was based on John L. O'Sullivan concept of “manifest destiny” from 1845.) With his contrast, the chief's able to conceive the urban gangster as a rat-like menace that slithers from the gutter to kill anything in his way, even children. Subtextually, the racism against immigrant Catholics emerges.) Essentially we have inherent moralism of the early US cinema, which urged the need for Camonte to fall, even if he appears most powerful throughout. As Wood noted frequently, genre is largely based on ideology; it's fostered through popular entertainment and in the film, directly stated by the chief.

These two insights came to me in my recent viewing. Showing the film to undergrads, I'm learning about their perspective. During this past viewing a scene that never appeared comical to me before suddenly came out as such to my students. Before Guino comes together with Ceska, shehits on him at a dance hall. She goes into a jazz age tap dance that, I'm sure, was hip at the film's release. Thanks to the inherent dating of old films, my students saw it as bizzare, visual comedy. When she halts to ask Guino, “Wanna dance with me?” he firmly replies, “No,” which turned into a punchline. I let it be, allowing the students temporary pleasure, ready to pause the screening soon and discuss Tony's murder of Guino, and the downfall coming in the narrative.

Black Death, Lost in its Own Darkness

As in life, some promises are hard to keep onscreen. This is true in the case of Walter Hill's cult pic The Warriors. The film begins with a bang, when a legion of gangs unit for a meeting that transforms street verite into fantasy. The crowd promises pure menace, with the remaining runtime its playground. Cyrus, the leader of the most powerful gang, calls a truce among the attendees to control the city, though the title gang gets framed after he's murdered. The chase narrative begins strong, though slowly dies. The gangs that come after “the Warriors” seem like rejects from the opening scene's drawing board. We're left imagining a real powerhouse threat, like the one Mad Max faces in part two of the series.

The same kind of folly appears in Black Death. The connection between this medieval thriller and The Warriors may seem stretch. Yet, we recall that the latter film's plot was inspired by history, the classic Greek Anabasis (hence, Cyrus, et al.), though the style comes from comic books by the way of the Lucas fantastic adventure age. Black Death begins with such promise. No surprise (considering the title), the plague has overtaken the land. A group of medieval warriors approach a monastery, seeking a guide for them to reach a village blessed with protection from the disease, where the dead can be brought back to life. The village is described as the kind of sanctuary/promised land so familiar to the monks that they waste no time in believing its existence. Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young monk, volunteers to guide the warriors, though for personal gain, since the trip will take him near his forbidden love (a subplot in full service of the greater arc).

The offer proves to be a trick, since the warriors actually seek a village consumed by the devil which they will defeat and take capture of the leader. The village is now described as the darkest of all things in creation, a sharp dive of irony that rattles the poor misfit on the quest. Viewers drawn to such a film will expect extremes of Dantean torment in the film's payoff. What actually shows may feel like more worthy irony, but only to symbolically minded viewers. The target audience will feel cheated by a film without the ideas or guts to bring hell to life onscreen.

Redmayne (also in My Week with Marilyn) can tap into dread and anguish, though the latter emotion brings him close to scenery chewing. Sean Bean, playing the leader of the gang, aims to suggest a tortured soul, while his gang mates blindly ape badassitude, looking as if they just gave up their dream of a heavy metal career. Yet inspiration was dead long before filming.

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead...Until a Second Act Prize

The food science/health documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead makes the filmmaker-subject motif – in which the man behind the camera spends as much time in front of it – appear to be the norm.  Not long ago, it was controversy.  Back when Barbara Kopple made Harlan County, USA, about West Virginia coal miner strikes, her voice was heard during interviews, which nonfiction purists thought to be an intrusion.  Today topical documentaries work in the post-Michael Moore/Spurlock milieu, in which the filmmaker is solidified as character.  This headline-ready approach is expected; purely objective nonfiction, quaint – now more academic.

The filmmaker/character, Joe Cross, is an overweight member of Australia's upper-middle-class.  A overtaxing schedule leads him to rely on the convenient, fatty-sugary-salty diet, born in – and sold worldwide – by America.  He decides to go on a juice-only diet, and during tours the home of the Big Mac and Whopper.  If the premise doesn't scream formula, his mostly forgettable interviews with random Americans will.  Cross packages his diet as a populist product, rather ironic in that the unhealth lifestyle is also a marketable means for profit.  (After all, Cross is an entrepreneur and investor.)  Affable enough, he doesn't find the traction to rise above the ordinary.

Joe Cross with Phil Riverstone 

Until a chance meeting with an obese truck driver named Phil Riverstone.  Cross learns they share the same skin disorder (which Cross is beating through diet) and shares a cup of his latest juice blend.  The spark of interest in Phil's eyes is truly heartwrenching, when hearing Cross's story and tasting the juice, admitting that it's not bad.  Though essentially the same, his ordeal towers over what Cross faced, since Phil suffers from severe mental issues that emerge in his weight problem.  It's my guess that Phil is ready to take Cross up on his offer for dieting help on the spot, but common tact prevented him.

Sure enough, a call for help comes to Cross back in Australia – and a chance to elevated his project, a bit late but not too much.  Phil's journey to health, with the help of Cross, transforms a lacking showpiece into a powerful tale of will and mentorship.  The result  – now on DVD and available on Netflix streaming – is uneven, a reinforced latter end that makes the earlier seem all the more weak.  But it saves the film and makes it worth the full run: if we skip past part one – about a journeyman who will become mentor – part two wouldn't have the same power.  Phil is as big a prize to Cross the filmmaker as Cross the coach was to his mentee.