The gangster movie was born from the observation of American crime, which proliferated with Prohibition and grew on the fringes of the Great Depression after the Wall Street crash of ’29. Le Roy with Little Caesar (1930), Wellman con Public enemy (1931) e Howard Hawks con Scarface (1932), progenitor of the genre.
Here the boss was Al Capone, scarred, truculent, incestuous, irrepressibly violent.
The screenplay by newcomer Oliver Stone
When he chooses to update it, Brian De Palma takes as his screenwriter the debutant Oliver Stone, whose writing streak is angry and rebellious towards US power, as his cinema will be (Salvador1986, Platoon1986, Wall Street, 1987, etc).Unlike the original set in Chicago during the Prohibition years, De Palma and Stone moved the illegal trades to the Miami of the drug trade of the 1980s.
The historical parallelism
Today De Palma’s Scarface returns to cinemas to celebrate 40 years since its release – which was a flop -, in a context of surprising historical parallels. The America of 1983 had Ronald Reagan, a “Teflon” conservative, as President. Stone and De Palma decided to show the fragility of his cynical, aggressive, ruthless, far from inclusive system, which was still suffering the brunt of the disastrous war in Vietnam in which the States lost their role as the pillar of the world. As is also happening now after the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the tensions with Russia over Ukraine, the Middle East issue and the specter of the return of Trump’s internalist policy.
Mariel’s exodus from Cuba to Miami
At the center of the story is an unscrupulous Tony Montana (Al Pacino), pure vital instinct, who arrived from Cuba during the Mariel Exodus, when Castro emptied the prisons in 1980, allowing 125 thousand islanders to cross the border into the United States. The strongest images of the film are not so much the already seen shootings and killings, but rather the assault of the Cubans on the dividing fence towards freedom. The same scenes that we can see now on the border with Mexico, or at the fences or walls in our Europe raised to prevent the entry of migrants. De Palma-Stone’s is the America of oppression, of the god of money, of the self-made mad whose myth America is always fascinated by.
De Niro versus Al Pacino
The role was initially offered to Robert De Niro, who turned it down. Al Pacino immediately proposed himself, and to play the part he was trained by the boxer Roberto Durán to obtain the right physique.
Steven Bauer was cast for the role of Manolo “Manny” Ribera, friend and partner in Tony’s criminal path, beating competition from John Travolta.
#Scarface #returns #theaters #years #flop #legendary #film
2024-04-08 20:56:35