Scarface

In 1920s Chicago the Italian immigrant Tony Camonte climbs to the top of the underworld through violence. He wants his boss's mistress and cannot tolerate his sister's relationship with his own lieutenant, and his end arrives where those two obsessions meet. Howard Hawks directed and Howard Hughes produced. The source is Armitage Trail's novel, itself drawn from Al Capone's life. Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay in eleven days in January 1931. The Capone connection was covered with name changes: Capone became Camonte, Torrio became Lovo, Moran became Doran. The film includes a fictionalised Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. The censorship fight ran long. The Hays Office found it too sympathetic to crime and demanded three things: a condemning prologue, a new ending showing capital punishment and the subtitle The Shame of a Nation. Hughes resisted; Hawks refused to shoot some of the additions and director Richard Rosson filmed them instead. It was banned in several states and cities. It grossed 600,000 dollars against an 800,000 budget. It entered the National Film Registry in 1994 and stands with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy as one of the founding works of gangster cinema. Who it is for: anyone curious where the gangster genre came from and viewers who like pre-Code Hollywood. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the 1983 Scarface. They share a source, but this one is shorter, faster and pitched entirely differently.