Scarface - Howard Hawks (1932)

This isn't your Tony Montana 'say hello to my little friend' Scarface. This is the original from back in the day. And the Tony Montana version was a remake of this one.

This movie was actually surprisingly good. Not sure why I say surprisingly. I guess because I am familiar with the more recent version, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. This is a movie with a solid and compelling story. I guess what makes this (possibly) better than the remake is that it is a simply told story. And there are not as many of the distractions (violence, sex, swearing) that take away from the story.

The subtitle of this movie is 'Shame of a Nation'. It was a cry for government and people in general to try and do something to stop the violence that was gripping the nation. And at the time, this was a pretty violent movie. Truth be told, Bugs Bunny cartoons are more violent than this is. For the time, and what was acceptable, this was pretty out there.

One of the cool things about this movie, (or at least I thought it was cool), was every time someone was killed in the movie, there was an X somewhere. In one scene there was an X on the apartment door (where the apartment number would be). In another scene, the roof beams were in the shape of Xs. Apparently on the set (at least according to Wikipedia), Hawks had a contest to see if people could come up with ideas on where and how to place the Xs. Like I said....I thought it was cool.

Not much to say on this one. Was a good movie and I enjoyed it.

One word to describe 'Scarface': X