One of the classic gangster films, and one of Howard Hawks' key works, Scarface has been out of circulation - except for surreptitiously distributed and almost unwatchable poor-quality dupes - for decades. Along with The Outlaw, Preston Sturges' Mad Wednesday, and three or four more obscure films, Scarface was produced and owned by Howard Hughes, who saw to it that his films were about as accessible as his own person to the general public. Now the Hughes Estate has sold the rights and negatives to Hughes' pictures to Universal, and one of the finest American films of the thirties can be seen and appreciated. In Sadoul's “Dictionary of Films,” Scarface warrants this entry:
“Loosely based on the career of Al Capone, Scarface was released as ‘the gangster film to end all gangster films,' but in fact triggered off a whole series of imitations. It is Hawks's best prewar film, despite the fact that some of the acting (such as that of Paul Muni) and the costumes have dated badly. Its violent visual style, its cutting, and its cynicism and sense of character are as arresting today as they were then. The opening sequence, in which the guest of honor is cold-bloodedly shot down after a mob party, is perhaps the best of the film's numerous memorable sequences.
“Screenwriter Ben Hecht and Hawks create a world for Scarface and his mob that is not unlike the court of the Borgias in Renaissance Italy with similar intrigues, double crosses, and gratuitous murders. Scarface himself is more arrogant and stupid than his counterpart in Von Sternberg's Underworld and gets to the top only through ambition and the fact that he has what was then a new absolute weapon, the machine-gun. His lieutenant, Little Boy, is characterized by his habit of perpetually flipping a coin and other mobsters are identified by their own special peculiarities of behavior - a device often imitated in gangster films. Though it has often been copied, Scarface still remains one of the best of its genre.”