YMMV / Scarface (1932)

• Adaptation Displacement: There was a book? Also on the receiving end of this from the 1983 remake, which is more popular to current audiences.
• Anvilicious: The film has an explicit and on-the-nose message amounting to "gang rule is bad for society, and the government needs to crack down on it". It's also an allegory of Al Capone and the gang wars in Chicago, making it hit closer to home. Though the scene of Moral Guardians insisting that crime doesn't pay wasn't directed by Howard Hawks and by and large audiences saw the original ending, which gave Camonte a Dying Moment of Awesome that made him a tragic hero as per the critic Robert Warshow.
• Award Snub: The film received zero Academy Award nominations. Paul Muni was nominated that year for I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: This film didn't give Tony Camonte any straight-laced companions (well, other than his mom); but the studio changed its title to Scarface: the Shame of a Nation and added dull scenes of bankers — not exactly heroes during the Depression — and a token Italian-American denouncing the Mob. This movie utterly fails to deglamorize its protagonist, even in his fall, in part because it shows him getting his comeuppance in a shootout where he faces off alone against more numerous and better-armed opponents. It failed so badly at this trope, in fact, that it resulted fifty years later in the remake.
• Genre Turning Point: This wasn't the first gangster film or even the first sound gangster film (that goes to Little Caesar) but it was the first crime movie that became a huge hit and created controversy since its main character was an expy of an actual criminal. Its non-judgmental use of a Villain Protagonist raised concerns about glorifying violence and raised enough fears among Moral Guardians that they demanded the movie be Re-Cut, not unlike the 1983 remake. Among moviegoers, Scarface and other Depression gangster films, was seen as edgy and innovative for use of contemporary slang that the working-class audiences recognized and used themselves, further showing the potential for sound cinema to be dramatically and socially realistic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Al Capone's nickname was "Scarface". Al Pacino, who would later star in the remake Scarface (1983), is almost an anagram of Al Capone.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tony Camonte gets his humane moments when he was remorseful about killing his best friend, Guino Rinaldo. And by the film's end when his sister, Cesca, was mortally wounded by a stray bullet.
• Magnificent Bastard: Guino "Little Boy" Rinaldo is Tony Camonte's right-hand and triggerman in his rise to power. A quick-thinking, coin-flipping and classic gangster who hides guns in useful places to avoid police trouble and remains resolute even when being interrogated, Guino assists Tony in striking major blows against the Irish mob—even personally assassinating crime lord O'Hara—and later fires the bullet that murders Johnny Lovo and secures Tony as the city's new boss. Guino is a pivotal part of keeping Tony in check and taking down threats to their empire, so when Tony murders Guino for marrying Tony's sister Cesca, it leads to Tony's immediate downfall. Guino treats even his death at Tony's hands with nothing but a stoic look and a flip of his coin, and Cesca later mocks Tony over how undignified and pathetic he is at the prospect of dying compared to Guino.
• Once Original, Now Common: Modern audiences might naturally find the violence of the first Scarface tame in light of the remake's chainsaw goodness. But in its day, the violence was considered very shocking and to some extent, this version is less sentimental. Tony Montana has Delusions of Eloquence giving speeches to people in the restaurant, "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy" and all that, but Tony Camonte has no such inclinations and indeed Paul Muni gave him a simian or animalistic leer and grin that made him harder to like and root for. It makes the film's decision to essentially make him a Tragic Hero that much bolder and make the initial panic against it understandable.

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