April | 2025 | Tanya's Astro Blog

1932 – Scarface (The Shame of a Nation)

It is a 1932 pre Hays code movie directed by Howard Hawks and co-produced by Howard Hughes. Its screenplay by Ben Hecht is loosely based on the novel of the same name by Armitage Trail (a pseudonym) and by the real life Al Capone and re-imagines some real events. It stars Paul Muni as Antonio “Tony” Camonte and some supporting cast includes George Raft and Boris Karloff. I rented it for 3,99 Eur on Apple TV.

I’ve been watching with horror on how in the last few weeks the office of president Trump has wilfully ignored court orders left and right and has deported or is in the process of deporting people that did not deserve to be deported (from expressing their opinion, to mistakes, to inconveniences, and so on…); not for nothing it’s being called a constitutional crisis. The office of the president, most notable led by Stephen Miller is employing draconian measures and cramming out weird laws to justify their actions. One is reminded of the Japanese internment camps during WWII in which American citizens of Japanese heritage were simply stripped of their rights via presidential Executive Order and Roosevelt was widely celebrated for it. Surely that could not happen today? Of course it can, our timeline is nothing special. People are easily persuaded to strip people of their rights in the name of security!

I did not expect to encounter those conundrums in this movie. It was supposed to be a gangster movie. I like those, escape into a world you know nothing about, where the ruthless rules of organized crime are as suspenseful as any relationship drama (“who’s going to betray who? is the oath of loyalty sworn going to hold?”). And hey, the gangster movie has a long tradition in America, so I wanted to know how it got its start.

With some jarring effect, Scarface doesn’t simply start after the opening credits; there are some title cards quite moralistically preaching the following: “This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and liberty. Every incident in this picture is a reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government: ‘What are you going to do about it?’. The government is your government. What are YOU going to do about it?”. At first I thought that they had to do this for a pre-Hays code film, sort of preemtive message saying “no, don’t glorify this guy!”. And sure, the movie is quite alluring showing all the riches Toni has at the height of his power, but I never saw it as glorifications, especially because you know he’s going to fall at some point. It still was banned in many states and cities.

But in the middle of the movie, it repeats that message and much clearer and much scarier. The newspaper editor and a politician argue that ordinary citizens are powerless against these gangsters unless the government does something. They keep on arguing that most of these thugs aren’t even citizens and that all of them should be rounded up and fast-tracked deported! And who if not us, the proper citizens to ask for laws to be changed in the name of security and liberty. Chilling how this could’ve been said in 2025!

As for the rest of the movie… I felt it was quite entertaining, it’s a crisp 93 minutes and a fun watch, often unintentionally funny. The car chases were cool and the movie’s depiction of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was quite ingenious play with shadows. But then… it was only that – entertaining. The acting is quite stiff in some places, the flow of one scene to the next somewhat abrupt.

It is probably a product of its time, Toni must have been much cooler in 1932, perhaps like Michael Corleone in 1972 or Jordan Belfort in 2013 – we all know those men are deeply flawed and criminal, but for a second you ask yourself, what would it be like to live in those shoes for a few days? Interestingly, I found the tragic character of Rinaldo, the quiet, loyal, but deadly associate much more alluring than the loudmouth Toni. So the end did not grip me as much, I was not invested in Toni’s faith, how they finally got him, how he went out, misled by a blinking advertisement that kept telling him “the world was his”! Ah well, predictable, even pre-code!

1931 – M (Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder)

A german Nero Film Production written and directed by Fritz Lang. Also here, Lang’s wife Thea von Harbou had a hand in co-writing this production. It stars Peter Lorre in the title role as the murderer. I saw it on Amazon Prime, where it is available for Prime members, but you can also watch it for free on YouTube.

Are there crimes so heinous, that even “normal” criminals are disgusted by them? That a series of them can paralyze an entire city of 4.5 million people? Yes, after 8 disgusting murders on little girls (it is only hinted what the murderer did to them), the whole city of Berlin is on edge. People are accusing random men on the street of being pedophiles for talking to children and parents don’t let their kids out of their sight, escorting them everywhere. And for good reason, the first scenes where we accompany the anguish of little Elsie’s mother waiting for her, hoping, asking and in the end just screaming her name, set me off as a viewing mother.

The whole city becomes so paranoid, that the police presence gets ramped up, raids on petty criminal hotspots have everybody agitated, cops are working overtime shifts to catch the killer. This increased police ubiquity in turn spooks the organized crime element in Berlin, that can’t handle such increased police presence on a day to day business. In a nice juxtaposition you see the heads of the organized crime and the chiefs of police debating on how to catch the killer, each with their own methods. This juxtaposition continues then, on one side with the grunt of detective work, the tediousness of hundreds of clues, interviews, etc. compared to the underground network of beggars and vagrants coordinating informal information networks.

And then there is the killer, clearly hunted by demonic inner drive. In one scene he tries to drown that drive in alcohol, yet it comes up again and again in the haunted, distorted whistled melody of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. At one point in the movie in an amazing monologue, he screams in agony: “I don’t want to, I HAVE to”.

Much can be said about the movie, the modern montages (really, I thought the procedural element has been unsung in the reviews that I have read so far), the genius use of sound for this very early sound movie, the introduction of noir elements (low angles, play on shadows, etc.) that influenced so many later films. And then the dilemma that is presented to the viewer almost breaking the fourth wall: “Showing pity and understanding to a clearly deranged person, is that a commensurate judgement for the most despicable crimes on children?” But one thing that touched me, that is probably very personal and many cinephiles watching this movie won’t catch is the Berlin element of it all.

It starts with the accents. Everybody, but the murderer speaks “berlinish”, sometimes even exaggerated, but it immediately made me feel at home. Yes that is us, sometimes a bit petty criminal, yes we have the “Berliner Schnauze” (a plump, even unfriendly way of speaking), but deep down, Berliners stick together. I love that Fritz Lang, an Austrian, understood that dynamic. Erich Kästner (a Berliner) had just in 1929 released his children’s book “Emil and the Detectives” and at so many points in the movie, I thought of that book and the atmosphere of late 20s, early 30s Berlin and their people: seedy, anything goes, poor, but also clever, fair and funny. It also reminded me of the song “Das ist Berlin” my husband worked on during his time at Funke. “When you spice yourself up, even though you’re ugly. When Stefan becomes Steffi. That is Berlin”. That spirit is still in the city: we will be very open to any of your ideas, you live you life man, you may see us as a bit lazy, a bit dumb, a bit unfriendly, a bit ugly, but when it really matters, we will band together, you can’t break this city’s spirit. And at the same time… we know; there is that haunting spectre hovering over the city in 1931… what is to come!

Ok, so I am a week late, but so happy this is the movie I got to see for this year, it had been on my list for far too long. I will probably post 2 weeks from now, fortunately I had set myself some cheat weeks.