Complete credited cast: | |||
Paul Muni | ... | ||
Ann Dvorak | ... | ||
![]() |
Karen Morley | ... | |
![]() |
Osgood Perkins | ... | |
![]() |
C. Henry Gordon | ... |
Inspector Guarino
|
George Raft | ... |
Rinaldo
|
|
![]() |
Vince Barnett | ... |
Angelo
|
Boris Karloff | ... |
Tom Gaffney
|
|
![]() |
Purnell Pratt | ... |
Publisher
|
Tully Marshall | ... |
Managing Editor
|
|
![]() |
Inez Palange | ... |
Tony's Mother
|
Edwin Maxwell | ... |
Detective Chief
|
Johnny Lovo rises to the head of the bootlegging crime syndicate on the south side of Chicago following the murder of former head, Big Louis Costillo. Johnny contracted Big Louis' bodyguard, Tony Camonte, to make the hit on his boss. Tony becomes Johnny's second in command. Johnny is not averse to killing anyone who gets in his and Johnny's way. As Tony is thinking bigger than Johnny and is not afraid of anyone or anything, Tony increasingly makes decisions on his own instead of following Johnny's orders, especially in not treading on the north side run by an Irish gang led by a man named O'Hara, of whom Johnny is afraid. Tony's murder spree increases, he taking out anyone who stands in his and Johnny's way of absolute control on the south side, and in Tony's view absolute control of the entire city. Tony's actions place an unspoken strain between Tony and Johnny to the point of the two knowing that they can't exist in their idealized world with the other. Tony's ultimate downfall may... Written by Huggo
Inevitably, Scarface will be compared with the near-contemporary gangster films, Little Caesar and Public Enemy, and Paul Muni with their stars Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. What does it tell us about that era: that all three careers took off with portrayals of gang leaders? The three performances significantly differ. Robinson rises to the top by the use of a crafty intelligence as well as violence; Cagney by a type of shrewdness and personal charisma. Paul Muni's Tony Comonte is neither intelligent nor personable; his manners are crude; and at times he is almost childlike in his behavior: for instance, when he is enjoying a play and is interrupted after the second act, summoned to do another killing,and leaves a henchman behind, who can tell him later how it came out, then is delighted to hear that the "guy with the collar" didn't get the girl; rather, the rougher suitor. He can be described as cunning and animistic: a young wolf who eliminates any rival who stands in his way; finally the leader of the pack One can be moved by Robinson's last words, "Is this the end of Little Caesar?" or by Cagney's body falling through the open door of his family home, he having been killed off-screen. Comonte's death is that of a trapped or cornered animal, wordless in a beautifully staged sequence,as brutal as his life, depicted for the audience in every detail. Of the three portrayals, Muni's comes across to me as the most chilling, in its enactment of instinctive evil. How ironic that He would later win his greatest fame for his performances as Emile Zola and Louis Pasteur.