The World is Yours: Scarface at 40

In December of this year, Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) will celebrate its fortieth anniversary. At nearly three hours long, Scarface tells the mythic tale of the rise and fall of Cuban drug lord Tony Montana (Al Pacino), whose obsessive quest for the American Dream ends in a hail of bullets.

It’s a grandiose, profane, violent, mesmerizing movie that has become firmly ensconced in the vernacular of our popular culture. One reason among many for this is the script, penned by Oliver Stone, which is chock-full of ridiculously quotable dialogue. In fact, few movies have ever been more quotable than Scarface. “Say hello to my little friend!” “I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.” “Lesson number two. Don’t get high on your own supply.” “You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked!” I could go on, but you get the point.

Everything about the film goes BIG. The gloriously garish, neon-drenched, eighties set designs are a feast for the eyes. Giorgio Moroder’s synth-heavy, post-disco infused score is itself a feast for the ears. The performances are uniformly stellar. From the top cast on down to the smallest bit players, they all commit fiercely to De Palma’s over-the-top aesthetic.

Pacino leads the charge playing Cuban refugee Tony with an accent that veers wildly into cartoon-land and a bombastic bravado that can’t be ignored. He’s electrifying. Steven Bauer as Tony’s pragmatic, even-keeled right hand man Manolo is sensational, while F. Murray Abraham, Robert Loggia, and Harris Yulan chew the scenery like they haven’t eaten in weeks.

Then there are the outstanding performances from the two main female supporting actresses, Michelle Pfeiffer as Tony’s long-suffering-wife Elvira Hancock and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Tony’s naive kid sister Gina. Both actresses beautifully chart the corrosive effects of Tony’s megalomania on those close to him. Pfeiffer delivers Elvira’s lines with dripping sarcasm and total contempt for Tony’s toxicity: “Don’t toot your own horn, honey. You’re not that good.” This is the performance that changed Michelle’s career. While Elvira is all withering contempt, Gina moves from hopeful naïveté to bitter cynicism. It’s the women who throw the film’s macho toxicity into such stark relief.

With Scarface, just three years into the 1980s, De Palma captured what would become the decade’s increasingly unhealthy obsession with money and power. As Tony Montana says, “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power.” “The world is yours,” reads the opulent globe in the foyer to Tony’s lavish, sprawling mansion, built on greed and the lust for more, at all costs. In a lot of ways, America went off the rails in the eighties and it’s never recovered. The American Dream that Cuban-born Tony chases turns out to be a nightmare. Scarface chronicles this greed-decade descent with the requisite bombast it deserves, thanks to De Palma and the rest of his cast and crew.

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I’m hoping to knock out a few more fortieth anniversary posts for Scarface before the year is out. Stay tuned!