Scarface (1983) ****
It's so interesting to see how one views a film at different points in their life or even depending on the mood they're in when they watch it. The last time I watched Scarface (1983) (my review here), I wrote how it didn't feel much like a Brian De Palma film. Now that it's been just shy of eight years since my previous viewing, I couldn't feel more different. Between the camerawork, the editing, the melodrama and the way De Palma takes the gangster picture to almost cartoonish proportions, it very much feels like his work.
Oliver Stone's script takes the very basic idea of Howard Hawk's fantastic original 1932 Scarface, transports the action from Chicago to Miami, switches the ethnicity of the characters from Italian to Cuban immigrants, and changes the means of power from illegal alcohol to cocaine. Stone's dialogue is part of the lexicon of cinema, like it or not. Al Pacino's performance is one of over the top bombast, an approach he's taken with many roles but perhaps never as memorably and to such great effect as here with Tony Montana. I still think Tony is despicable and almost wholly unlikable but I applaud Pacino’s willingness to fully embrace the character. While Michelle Pfeiffer often just appears as (undeniably, strikingly beautiful) "set dressing" (to use her own words), she still conveys a powerful sense of sad reality to a certain type of woman that does indeed exist. Giorgio Moroder's somber synth score (punctuated by Hi-NRG tracks) perfectly compliments the 80s excess on display throughout.
Scarface's commentary on greed and Capitalism may feel a bit ham fisted, and there have been other, better, tales of the upward and then downward spiral of gangsters that have risen from the gutter to glamor and then back to the gutter. But there is no denying the staying power and the equal appeal of and disgust for De Palma's operatic orgy of drugs, violence and vulgarity.
You can find my Brian De Palma Feature Films Ranked list here.
Oliver Stone's script takes the very basic idea of Howard Hawk's fantastic original 1932 Scarface, transports the action from Chicago to Miami, switches the ethnicity of the characters from Italian to Cuban immigrants, and changes the means of power from illegal alcohol to cocaine. Stone's dialogue is part of the lexicon of cinema, like it or not. Al Pacino's performance is one of over the top bombast, an approach he's taken with many roles but perhaps never as memorably and to such great effect as here with Tony Montana. I still think Tony is despicable and almost wholly unlikable but I applaud Pacino’s willingness to fully embrace the character. While Michelle Pfeiffer often just appears as (undeniably, strikingly beautiful) "set dressing" (to use her own words), she still conveys a powerful sense of sad reality to a certain type of woman that does indeed exist. Giorgio Moroder's somber synth score (punctuated by Hi-NRG tracks) perfectly compliments the 80s excess on display throughout.
Scarface's commentary on greed and Capitalism may feel a bit ham fisted, and there have been other, better, tales of the upward and then downward spiral of gangsters that have risen from the gutter to glamor and then back to the gutter. But there is no denying the staying power and the equal appeal of and disgust for De Palma's operatic orgy of drugs, violence and vulgarity.
You can find my Brian De Palma Feature Films Ranked list here.
Comments
Post a Comment