Scarface- Latin American Culture Scarface

Scarface- Latin American Culture

Scarface (1932) film is an American gangster movie, written by Ben Hecht, directed by Richard Rosson and Howard Hawks, and produced by Howard Hughes. The film is founded on the 1929 novel written by Armitage Trail (White 30). The film stars Paul Muni as Antonio, Tony' Camonte. Brian de Palma remakes the film in 1983 in different setting in the Latin American and Miami drug cartel, with Al Pacino, Tony Montana, as the star (Myers 335). The Al Pacino Scarface film retells the story of an immigrant into the United States who attain wealth and power because of his indulgency in drug trafficking.

Al Pacino, acting as Montana, is a Cuban refugee who traffics drug from Colombia to Miami in the United States. The film Scarface I and II invites the observer to evaluate the two films and review the similarities and differences between them. The differences in Scarface II are richly inventive and provide far tremendous value and thematic rewards than what Scarface I provide. As to the similarities between the two movies they portray a clear correspondence, in that, they are both abundant and vary from personal pictorials through comprehensive scenes to general plot structures.

Introduction

Scarface I Film produced in 1983 is a remake of Scarface II film version produced in 1932. The production period between the two movies is the major aspect that establishes the key differences and similarities between the original and modernized film. The 1932 version of Scarface occurs in the course of prohibition period when there is complete ban of alcohol in most of the states. As the movie unfolds, men indulge in selling bear unlawfully in order to obtain robust profit. Considering the unlawful sell of beer, the police agencies engage in fighting and ignoring the unlawful beer distribution. As Tony Comante heads Johnny Lovo's new territory extorting businesses already dealing in illegal businesses and these increases his reputation and fortune making Johnny Lovos' gang try to terminate his life.

On the other hand, the 1932 version consists of replicated events before being released and basing its story from a renowned gangster Al Capone. Changes occur in the 1983 film when the version adapts to something that relates to its time. The 1983's version of Scarface II based its story on the Cuban immigration and drug trafficking in Miami, Florida. We have Tony Montana involved in various jobs in the world by doing one job at a time. Tony Montana will shift from killing to drug deals where he yield enough money to build his own empire and separates himself from his bosses, but that lasts for a short while he is gunned down in his own empire. This remake encounters numerous changes for it to convince the audience about its reformation from the initial one instead of demonstrating an era gangster film. For this reason, this paper evaluates the differences and similarities between Scarface I and II.

Similarities

In their plot, the two movies are similarly matching. The both stage an insolvent immigrant's murderous rise to wealth and authority in a big city within the criminal world. In Scarface I, Italian Tony Camonte murders his criminal adviser Johnny Lovo in order to take over the bootleg beer in Prohibition-era Chicago -- and to obtain Lovo's stylish light-colored girlfriend. In Scarface II film, post-Castro Cuban exile Tony Montana similarly kills his criminal world mentor Frank Lopez, marries his dead patron's equally light-colored and elegant girlfriend Elvira Hancock, and in collaboration with the intercontinental drug entrepreneur Alejandro Sosa paves his way to taking over the narcotics trade in "cocaine boom" Miami. Each criminal's sensational story is thus a savage misrepresentation of the "rags-to-riches" story long consecrated in the American culture of sovereignty and opportunity. However, cinematic formula declares that the gangster's rise has its end and both Camonte and Montana encounters a final trounce and death in a hail of bullets.

Characterization is similarly unclear in the two films. In the Manichean world of Scarface I, the observer -- and the characters themselves -- are certain of the difference between the criminals and police officer, between evil and good, as they were certain about the difference between darkness and light, black and white. In the Scarface II film, however, one doubts about the character's ethical status -in both the criminal world and the decent society surrounding it. The two films are considered the most potent, boldest, violent and brutal mobster crime films. The sensational productions record the conventional, but catastrophic rise and fall of disreputable gangster figures (White 30).

Differences

Notwithstanding several similarities amid Scarface I and Scarface II, the two movies display numerous differences. Apparently, the moral perspectives in the two movies are fundamentally divergent. The position in the 1932 Scarface is as traditionally honest and considerate of the set up authority, an inclination that modern guardians of public righteousness such as J. Edgar Hoover and the Hays office would support.

Despite sharing the same concept, the moral perspectives of the two films are radically divergent. Scarface 1932 condemns gang violence and this is evidenced through its subtitle, 'The Shame of a Nation." The movie seems to challenge the society to condemn and fight corruption that gives way to establishment of illegal trade in the society (Bender 40). The main character in the movie, Tony Camonte, is cornered and killed by police officers. As a result, the story line evidently congratulates police officers and detectives, the Media and other law enforcement agencies in their fights to end crime and corruption in the society.

The theme of evil and good is evident in the 1932 Scarface where police and other law enforcement agencies fights the evils perpetrated by the gangsters. The film's black and white cinematography tributes that desolate contrast between the forces of good and evil. The mobsters in the 1932 Scarface are individuals of darkness and shadow who carry out their assignations and shooting at night. While the gangsters are fighting at night, virtue defenders fight the gangsters in brilliant indoor lighting or broad day light.

However, in the 1983 Scarface, the moral perspective and visual design in the film are more intricate. In Scarface II, color photography undermines the representation of dark and light imagery that controlled the 1932 Scarface, both morally and visually. Uncertainty and inversion reign through contrast in de Palma Scarface where the drug lord, Frank Lopez probably influences a luminous white suit in form of a highly regarded businessperson dining in a fashionable steakhouse to put on a black suite. Such reversals go beyond individual dressing to the whole scenes (Prince 231).

For instance, a promisingly constructive episode such as Montana delayed reunion with his immigrant mother and Gina Montana, his sister, is performed at night. However, his final fatal introduction to drug lord, Sosa, takes place during the day. These inversions are predicted in Montana's first drug deal. While the criminal meeting is planned to take place during the night, it happens during the day, in the "Sun Ray Motel." Notwithstanding the luminous situations, the feeling is dangerously defective. Cordial smiles hide treachery and murder plans. A woman stretches out in a seductive manner on a bed where she has hidden an assault rifle while the Cuban buyers defeat the Colombian suppliers' deadly ambush (White 31).

Scarface 1983 features copious violence, including a dishonorable chainsaw killing that triggered the MPAA to threaten the movie with an X rating unless De Palma trimmed the gore, but he never did. Scarface 1983 emerged as a prototypical eighties film, as much in tune with and as contemplative of its period as the Howard Hawks' original was of Depression America. De Palma's updates of image relocated its activities to Miami and made its gangster hero, a Cuban expelled from Castro's Cuba as portion of Mariel boat exodus of 1980. The movie is vivid in evoking the 1980s as a decade of greed, avarice and moral corruption.

Tony Montana is perfect for the time, in which the movie is set, a shark, all appetite, ferocious, dead-eyed, killing his way to the top of illegal drug trade. "Me, I want what's coming to me. The world and everything that's in it" (Prince 230). Tony shortly attains his desire with the assistance of compliant U.S. businesses. The film indicts the American capitalism for being a partner with Tony Montana and the South America drug kingpins (Bender 40). Legal American banks help Montana in laundering Montana's drug money while a U.S. government representative is shown in attendance at a policy session called by a drug lord and his accomplice in Bolivian military and government.

Awash with cruelty, the Scarface 1983 is unremittingly cold and savage. The chainsaw killing is one of the most infamous violence scenes. De Palma included this scene in the movie to dramatize the intensified violence spawned through the narcotic trade (Prince 231). Montana frenzied emotions as he watch Angel's killing, and the blood spattered on floor and wall gives the scene its terrible power. The image is disparaged, as Hawk's Scarface had been disparaged in the 1930s for its violence. Both films irritated their relevant critical establishments, and in this way, De Palma's remade was truest to its source. Scarface 1983 savagery and energy united with its political portrait of the illicit drug trade form a memorable and powerful evocation of 1980s narco-corruption (Prince 231).

One of the most striking disparities amid the 1932 Scarface and 1983 Scarface is between Tony Camonte, who makes a fortune through selling bear, but never drinks it, and Marielito Tony Montana, shown at one point collapsing in a pile of his product, undone as much through consuming as by selling cocaine ( Leitch 45) . The 1983 Scarface trades on the forbidden glamour of drug as an indication of the economic achievement that both confirmed the main characters arrival among the upper classes and prepared for their breakdown. The audience proves similarly conflicted in the attitudes towards screen violence. The drugs that mark his rise and success waste Marielito Tony Montana.

The characterization in the two films is hesitant. In Scarface I viewer Manichean world, the characters are confident of the disparities between policeman and criminal Scarface, evil and good, black and white, darkness and light. In 1983 film, the moral status is uncertain, both in the drug world and in the upright society. It is not clear whether, Omar Suarez, Frank Lopez's henchman is in indeed a police informant (Palmar 158). It is unclear whether Omar deserved the lynching that he got from Sosa. Frank Lopez does not believe that Omar is a police informant while Tony does not know what to think about Omar. Moreover, uncertainty shadows other scenes and characterizations, Miami's chief narcotic drug detective, Bernstein, is a familiar face in Frank's private office.

Frank's private office ironically is trimmed with framed pictures of professed law and justice champions among them President Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. This suggests a high degree of corruption, confirmed when Berbstein is involved in a negotiation of money-spinning kickbacks and bribes with Tony Montana and other gangsters (Palmar 158). Moreover, reputable lawyers and bank view Tony as their valued client and they enjoy the gains from his illegal drug trade. Despite the irrefutable evidence produced in the courtroom against Tony, Sosa give surety that his Washington friends, will employ their power influence to release Tony from prison. As a result, in Scarface 1983, the line amid unlawful and lawful, wrong and right is imprecise.

All characters in Scarface 1983 are skeptical and hardened to acknowledge deception and insincerity for what they are. However, Tony is candid to offer such conduct its correct name when he denounces Bernstein, Lopez and a journalist when he refers to them as moral traitors who are " fly straight" and incapable of telling the truth (White 31). Such openness forms part of Tony's virtue that may be used to explain the communist regime of Fidel Castro and his character, besides his obstinate refusal to allow a government to rule his thinking. Tony is deserving of praise and civilized.

However, virtue in Scarface 1983 is far less readily recognized and respected in Montana's Miami than it is in Scarface 1932, Camonte's Chicago. In Scarface 1932, the worlds of the bootlegger and police officer are distinguishable, morally and visually. In Scarface 1983, the underworld's symbolic quintessence and capital, "Babylon Club" signifies ambiguity and duality distilled to their nature.

Named after the ancient city tantamount at once with architectural magnificence, with laudable objective overwhelmed through linguistic and cultural confusion, that is " Tower of Babel," and with grand tyranny and corruption, the Babylon Club is equally multivalent. Its outer front elevation is more conventional Greek compared to Near Eastern; it is smoke-filled internal fogs discernment and vacillates amid intense darkness and bright, kaleidoscopic shades. The patrons of the club range from fun-loving and attractive young adults, who represent the Latin American culture, via police detectives to homicidal drug lords. The patrons alternately dodge tommygun bullets and merrily dance to optimistic music that acknowledges the commerce in 'yayo' (Cocaine) which bankroll both the club and their own ostentatious prosperity besides the grim inspiration and price of criminal world warfare.

The Babylon club is the unauthorized command center of, 'the Cuban crime wave," and Montana is an active person in the corrosive inclination. Through repeated scenes in the Club, mounted mirrors get hold of Tony's image from different angles, De Palma camerawork warns the viewer not to condemn Tony too quickly, but instead invites the viewer to view Montana from different perspectives to comprehend his intricate character (Prince 231). On the contrary, Scarface 1932 does not offer the viewer different perspectives to understand the character of Tony Camonte. This is because, Camonte is a one-dimensional hooligan who pursues power and money as fulfilling ends.

Unlike Camonte, Montana is crueler and he looks for rewards that are more spiritual and emotional than material. Power and money according Montana matters only as a way of securing and attracting the best woman as opposed to simple sexual playtoy that sufficed for Tony Camonte. As Tony confides to Elvira, he needs a wife who can bear him children, complete, and sustain his family, the things that he never achieved in the course of his formative years in Cuba, " forget Papa', he reprimand Gina, his sister; we never had one" (Prince 231). Apparently, Tony's family was a typical Latin-American family, which is at once strong and weak. The bond that hold a Latin-American family are extremely powerful, just like the bond between Tony and his sister, but usually biblical family morals are not present. The two are brought up a single parent.

Monolo, Tony's best friend tells, Gina that he and Tony are like siblings and that he understand Tony's conducts and needs better than Tony understand himself. Monolo explains to Gina that Tony's overpowering limitations on her autonomy demonstrates Tony's effort to offer his sister with paternal guidance and protection that she never enjoyed. Tony and Gina lack of some nurturing, confidence-developing father inflicted a deeper psychic wound on Tony. Tony's unpractical and excessive hostility towards older male's authority figures that demean him continues.

For instance, when Omar sneers at Tony as " baggage handler'; when Bernstein mocks him as a contemptible, "Punk" with suicidal irony, and as a single-parent, 'son of a bitch" and when Sosa brands him a "little monkey" Tony does not shrug off the insults or reject them with positive achievements. The sneers exacerbated his inferiority and he admits to Elvira " I come from the gutter," and his instinctual reaction to the sneers is to kill anyone who demeans him.

Tony's strange talent and charm could earn him emotional support as well as healing that a conventional family set in a legal society can offer. The world which he joins, despite promising him material security and high opinion for his friends in crime is questionable through moral confusion, betrayal, hypocrisy and gluttony to fulfill his desperate needs. Tony Montana renounces his wife in the name of her drug use that makes her incapable of bearing him children. In an action of dreadful misunderstanding, Tony murders Monolo his brother who clandestinely married Gina, Tony's sister. While Gina tries to kill Tony out of devastation, Sosa's mercenaries murder her.

Tony act of decorum is evidenced when he refuses to bomb a car that carried Sosa's enemy and his unsuspecting wife and children. Tony's single action of graciousness would have earned him the applause and admiration of law-biding society; in the ethically inverted and even disordered society of illegal drug trade. However, his good deed proves his undoing, besides raising the moral stand of Tony, but he is killed not by police officers like Tony Camonte, but by criminal gang who are punishing his morally advanced conduct that violates the criminal unprincipled code (Palmar 158). Following an extended battle, the Sosa mercenaries gun down Tony from behind reminding the viewer of Omar Suarez's who admonished Tony to, Watch my back" as the pair had carefully negotiated with the double-dealing Sosa. Tony had disposed off his sister, brother and wife and any other potential protect and he had been left with no none to "watch"

In Scarface 1932, Tony Camonte is a straightforward criminal who receives punishment for his straightforward crimes through conformist, effortless and socially approved means. On the contrary, Tony Montana in the extremely gloomed, chaotic and morally indefinite criminal world of the 1983 Scarface is not a tragic hero, but his fate is that of the intricate narrative of an intricate man who pursues a commendable objective through tragically self-defeating and unsuitable ways.

The character trait of Montana suited Al Pacino's bold personality. Scarface 1983 became prominent because of its plot line and theme, as well as because the Cuban community rejected it for portraying Cubans as drug traffickers and criminals. Scarface Al Pacino also received criticism because of its explicit language and disproportionate violence. In the film, Tony arrives in Miami in the course of the Mariel boat life. Tony acted as Cuban Marielito. According to Lyman, an author, the greatest concentration of criminals came in the Mariel Harbor exodus with almost 2% of those arriving in the United States having been categorized as criminals, drug users, vagrants and prostitutes. The criminal component of these Cuban immigrants was referred to as Marielito, meaning undesirable or criminal (Lyman 308). Tony Montana represents the Cuban in the United States, Marielitos who were mental patients and criminals whom Castro deported to the United States from Mariel Harbor in 1980 (Rojas 24) . The Mariel boatlift is significance in introducing the character of Tony Montana. Tony is focused on the drug business and terrorists' tactics that support the illegal trade (Palmer 158).

According to Herrera, an author, AL Pacino starring as a Cuban exemplifies and analyzes the stereotype of the Cuban exile and the Cuban-American community in the United States of America. This highlights the stigmatization of the Cuban in the United States through images that portray them as drug dealers, mafia or right-win groups (Herrera 323). The movie's main character, Tony Montana, is apparently for grounded as a radicalized other. His Cuban identity, penchant for garishness, accent, and his general cruel approach to human life and wealth served as the foundation for the popular media representation of Latin America drug dealers that came to take over the 1980s (Indiana University 86).

Similarly, in Scarface I, the Italians are stereotyped as gluttonous and shady. Moreover, the Italians were stereotyped as criminals who would engage in criminal activities to achieve their dreams. The movie holds plenty of examples of hardcore aggression with Hawks using expressionistic filmmaking to show some violence in a more passive manner. In Scarface I Paul Muni plays a gangster modeled on Al Capone. Muni's mugging for the camera and his phony Italian accent are embarrassing. The gangster is lost in the gap between conventional Italian culture and the American dream of social and economic success. The gangster movie implies that the Italian immigrants as too totally 'puppets of fate' to join the American society. This fatalism is displayed both as a cultural neighborhood product and because of displaced and dysfunctional Italian survival mechanisms. The conventional Italian cultural baggage led either to life as an unassimilated outsized or to life of crime.

According to Aguirre, an author, the generally forgettable stream of North American action adventures hubs on drug-trafficking actions of pony-tailed Colombians apparently illustrates the negative stereotyping of Latin Americans. The film drew its story line and criminal figures from the accepted version of radicalized representation (Khouri 167). The Latin America drug dealer as epitomized through the character of Al Pacino, Tony Montana, in the 1983 Scarface would occupy a key place in a criminal culture that would become increasingly described through race during these politically conformist periods (Indiana University 87).

Conclusion

Scarface I and II are stunningly similar in that they both revolve around the rise and fall of a criminal. In my opinion, the differences between the two films are stylistic. Scarface II is simply a restructured version of Scarface 1. The remark replaces alcohol with cocaine and is set in Miami instead of Chicago. In addition, a Cuban refugee replaces the Italian mobster in the earlier film. If the Cuban refugee was the protagonist in 1932 Scarface, the film could not make a good movie in 1983, and probably if the vice versa could happen. Even though the two movies vary, the differences between them make them lose their main initiative. Scarface II is dedicated to Howard Hawks Ben Hecht, the director and principal screenwriter respectively. By dedicating, this film them, Brian De Palma pays homage to these great film producers and it is clear that he wanted to restructure the film without any major alterations. In essence, by using Tony Montana, with phonetic proximity of the names of the protagonists in the original film, Tony Camonte, Brian de Palma main idea was to make Scarface 1983, that took place in Chicago and to maintain the same themes of race, immigration relationships, and the concept of exile, identification, citizenship and marginalization. De Palma made tremendous work of changing the necessary things under a new production era. The big gap between Scarface I and II made it difficult to make numerous changes. However, these two films are the best gangster films, which share the episodes of a young man in search of the American dream. The two men succeed in achieving their goals, even though they experience similar fate in the end.

Work Cited

Aguirre, Carlos. Reconstructing criminality in Latin America. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

The book explores how different Latin American societies have been identified, described, viewed and responded to criminal conduct. Crime in Latin America is assessed in terms of class, race, gender and criminological theory. The book highlights how Latin American culture is constructed and the author cites several movies among them, Scarface 1983 to show how the characters in the movie represent the Latin American culture.

Bender, Steven. Greasers and gringos: Latinos, law, and the American Imagination. New York: NYU Press, 2003.

The book highlights negative stereotypes of Latinos, which is evident in the American popular culture. The author ascertains why Latinos are portrayed as drunken, lazy, violent, criminals and drug users by the media and the society. The book looks at how Latinos are treated by police, vigilantes, and prosecutors among other people in the mainstream society. The book is relevant to the research topic as it highlights the Latin American culture.