Hawks Marathon: Scarface (1932)

 I don't exactly know what to say about Scarface.  When you watch older movies that have attained classic status, you run the risk of something perhaps not aging as well as you'd hope.  To fully appreciate a movie, you need to understand the context, because just watching it by itself will make it not seem special.

Because... Scarface is very hard for me to take seriously if I'm being honest.  I had the same problem with The Public Enemy, and I suspect I'd have similar problems with Little Cesear as well.  The three movies were all made around the same time, and all helped create and influence the gangster drama to this day.

But I can't lie.  When I say I find it hard to take it seriously, I'm specifically referencing the beyond parody of how everybody talks.  Like I've seen people make fun of old time gangster voices, and I've seen parodies, but nothing can prepare you for the fact that those parodies... are not exaggerating in the slightest.

I don't know specifically why it's hard to take this seriously when other movies around this time also have goofy, parody ready voices.  I have two theories.  The first is that the goofy parody has tended to be a side character from the movies I've seen, and I can't take those characters any more seriously than I can here, but the characters you are actually supposed to care about tended to talk like a normal human being.

The second is that this is a gangster film and you're supposed to buy these guys as tough.  But the way they talk has so devolved into obvious parody by this point, that it is impossible to think of these guys as genuine threats.  It's like I'm watching a fucking Key and Peele sketch every time they open their mouth.

Which is a shame because, more than any other movie I've seen, I think this might be Hawks' best direction?  Or at least, it's the one where his direction is most evident.  Most of his movies are trying to hide his directing, which makes it tough to determine his influence beyond it just being a good movie.

Here, he makes the kind of choices that makes a director stand out, instead of hidden.  He has to show quite a lot of violence, and even though this was pre-Code, it needed to be obscured and hidden.  So in the opening scene, he has a very cool shot of a guy getting gunned down, seen purely through the shadows.  The camera then pans back to the body, which is now lying on the ground.

And he does that more than a few times and it's waaaaay more effective than actually showing the killing, especially then.  And there's very few actual people dying in front of us in this movie, and the few times they do, you're reminded why it's so much more effective to not show us the death.  Because actors did not know how to die on film in a way that didn't look goofy for... a long time.

I wish I could watch this movie and make my brain not notice the goofiness of the voices.  Especially since I can't really give you any sort of notes on the actors.  I've seen Paul Muni in two other things and this is my least favorite performance of his, but I also readily admit it's entirely due to the things everyone else in this movie was doing.  Everybody was guilty of the funny voices and weird mannerisms.

This is thankfully not one of those movies where I am befuddled over its reputation.  The damn 1930s gangster parody is the only problem I have with the movie, but it's a problem that's hard to ignore since any good gangster film makes you fear the gangsters.

It is weird that, despite this being pre-Code, Scarface seemed subject to Production Code era rules.  They have a ridiculous opening where they condemn gangsters and say we must stop them and what are the politicians doing.  I know they needed to change the ending - it's based on Al Capone - who most certainly did not die by the events of this movie.  And I'm sure they couldn't gotten away with what they got away with, but I just find it fascinating they still needed to change quite a bit.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Scarface.  I'm going to not give a grade, because it's impossible for me to grade this.  It's a better movie than whatever grade I would give, but also I can't give a better grade because that would imply I bought into this world.  So, hopefully one day I can get used to the parody.

Howard Hawks Marathon

I liked the Orson Welles marathon so much that I was dedicated to focusing on another writer/actor/director for my next feature.  This is actually a pretty rare phenomenon so my options were limited, but I landed on John Cassevetes, the king of independent film.  

But that didn't really work out.  I really wanted to watch his first leading or co-leading role first.  I tend not to care about watching movies in a specific order, but he was an established actor before he directed a movie so that's where I wanted to start.  It was not easily available anywhere, and that coupled with a few of his directed features also not being accessible, I decided to move onto a director with an easier to watch filmography.

It wasn't long after that that I landed on Howard Hawks.  Before starting this, I had seen a grand total of one Howard Hawks film, His Girl Friday.  I watched it without fully understanding the screwball comedy genre, so I was completely caught off guard by it.  But aside from that, I had seen zero of his movies. 

Hawks is not an obvious choice from the outset.  He's been nominated for Best Director just once and his pictures were never nominated for Best Picture.  He's been nominated for three directing awards by the directors' guild, but never won.  He was not particularly critically acclaimed during his time.

But he seems to benefit from time.  Influential film critic Andrew Sarris said Hawks was the least known and least appreciated Hollywood director of any stature.  Critic Leonard Maltin called him the greatest American director who isn't a household name.  A French film magazine, Cahiers du cinéma, loved, loved Hawks and the French in general were the first to claim him as an all-time great.  Jean-Luc Godard has called him the greatest American director.

In addition to that, he has eight movies in the 1,001 movies to watch before you die, eight movies in the New York Times 1,000 best sound movies ever made, two movies in Ebert's Great Movies list, and seven movies from the 501 Must See Movies.  He's retroactively a highly acclaimed director.

He's also a very obvious fit for a marathon.  Hawks dabbled in just about every genre, which some theorize tended to make him underrated.  John Ford is known for the Western, Alfred Hitchcock for the thriller.  Hawks meanwhile make gangster films, Westerns, romantic comedies, romantic dramas, musicals, comedies, film noirs, war pictures, and adventures.

He is primarily known for helping to popularize the screwball comedy with Twentieth Century in 1934, but he made four other movies that are also screwball comedies, and two musicals that could be classified in the screwball genre.  But he also made just as many Westerns.  He taught aviators to fly in World War I, and made at least four pictures focused on aviation due to his love of it.

His only nomination for Best Director came from a war picture.  One of his most well-known movies, Scarface, was a gangster flick.  He only made one film noir (to my knowledge), The Big Sleep, but it's on just about every best of film noir list you'll find.  He has a few adventure movies, and my suspicion is that it will have some screwball like elements.

All in all, you have all the ingredients for a good marathon.  With a wide variety of movies, I don't think I'll get burnt out from watching his movies.  I can jump from a screwball comedy to a war movie to a Western.  Plus, he worked with the stars of the era a lot, so I can see everyone from Carole Lombard to Humphrey Bogart to John Wayne to Marilyn Monroe.

So I'm pretty excited.  Over the next couple months, because Hawks made so many movies, I'll be watching most of his catalogue - at least what I can.  A surprising amount of his movies are on Youtube or Dailymotion.   A few are on HBOMax or Amazon Prime.  I only do not have access to a few of his movies, and I'm hoping TCM, who frequently air his movies, will come in clutch for those few.  If not, well I'll still get to near 20 of his movies.