Howard Hawks’s gangster movie, “Scarface,” which I discuss in this clip, has a special place in his career. It was shot in 1930 but not released until 1932, due to the censors’ concerns regarding its violence and ostensible glorification of crime. Hawks made his first feature in 1925 and his last in 1970, so “Scarface” was one of his first films, and one that he cherished throughout his life. Here’s what he told Joseph McBride, who compiled his interviews with Hawks, conducted between 1970 and 1977, in a book:
Hawks was one of the greatest filmmakers ever to work in Hollywood. (The young critics at Cahiers du Cinéma who became the filmmakers of the French New Wave were identified as the “Hitchcocko-Hawksians.”) If none of his films landed high on Sight and Sound’s list of the greatest films of all time (“Rio Bravo” tied for sixty-third), it’s because any one of a dozen of his films could arguably belong there. But “Scarface” is by far the most visually inventive and tonally anarchic movie that Hawks made. Among other things, it’s a tribute to the freedom that independent producers afforded directors then—and still do today.
