Howard Hawks' seminal gangster drama "Scarface" is finally available on DVD separate from the 1983 Brian DePalma remake. Featuring Paul Muni as the title character the screenplay by Ben Hecht is lively to say the least. Ann Dvorak appears as Cesca the Scarface's sister. Censors at the time felt that Scarface's affections for his sister were less than brotherly and objected forcing Hawks to re-edit the film. They also forced the director to reshoot the ending. Ultimately Hawks couldn't placate censors and released the film without their approval without the changes they insisted on him making. Featuring a number of sharp supporting performances including George Raft (who grew up around gangster in New York and later had many of them coming to him for style tips when he became successful and Boris Karloff as a thug who meets his demise in a unique way, the film looks stylish for such an early "talkie" featuring camera moves that would set ups that would become a Hawks trademark. It's a vintage classic well worth watching. ***

My one criticism of Universal is the fact that they don't include scene selection as an option for the film. Also, it would have been nice to have a commentary track for this classic film given how writer Ben Hecht was inspired to write many of the incidents in the film based on what he learned as a newspaper writer in Chicago about the various gangsters. ---

Image & Sound:

Although the image is occasionally soft, "Scarface" looks pretty good in its DVD presentation. Grain is pretty prominent but given the type of film stock used at that time, the age of the film and the source material, I'm not a bit surprised. This appears to be the same transfer from the "Scarface" boxed set from 2003. Audio sounds flat which isn't a surprise given that this was an early "talkie". ---

We get the alternate ending that Hawks shot but abandoned for his much more direct and violent one. In this one Scarface survives and is tried, convicted and hanged. You'll notice that Muni isn't seen clearly in these scenes probably because it isn't him. ***

We also get an introduction by TMC's Robert Osborne discussing the making of the film. Osborne tells the well known story about a visit to writer Ben Hecht from Al Capone's thugs who wanted to know if the film was about Capone. Hetcht convinced them to become consultants on the project after to them and convincing them that it wasn't about Capone but it needed to SEEM like it was to sucker audiences into the movie.

Final Words: