Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

The movie very much accentuates the tragic fate that governs Camonte’s life (and
the protagonists of similar films). We almost know in advance his end and the path that
will lead to it. At the same time, we feel the incestuous relationship that exists between
himself and his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak), inspired by the Borgia family and which
culminates with the death of Rinaldo as Tony comes to believe he is his sister’s lover,
without knowing that he had just married her. This is the type of background luridness that
occupies this film, with a torrent of assassinations and stylised violence. The film abounds
with symbols like a rosary of crosses, representing death, or X (the symbol of elimination)
which mimetically prefigures each of the murders.
Scarface thus helped to define the gangster period and gave rise to the production
of dozens of similar productions. It still stands as a perfect example of the contradiction
that existed between America as the land of opportunities and plenty and America as a
violent jungle. Indeed, the Hays Office, recognising the film’s danger, established a new
code with clauses directly aimed at it. The code declared that movies could no longer
present crimes “in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and
justice or to inspire others with a desire for imitation” (see p. 465). The Hays Office told
Hawks that “Gangsterism must not be mentioned in the cinema. Scarface will never be
released”.
Lloyd Hughes, in his Rough Guide to Gangsters Movies, explains why these three
films are seminal pieces of work of the early 1930s:
This triumvirate defined every trope, every icon, and every theme of the classic
model: the rise and fall of an immigrant, the allusions to Al Capone, the honour
killings, the moll, the cars, the tommy guns, the gang war, the significance of
clothes, the best friend, the loyal mother, the father figure who must be killed and
usurped, the shoot-out in the streets, and the pathetic death of the protagonist,
usually apotheosized by some famous last words. (Hughes 2005:28)
This film troika, often referred to as an “unholy trinity”, embodies the most famous
examples of the gangster movies, generating a near-instant genre paradigm. They also
anticipated certain elements later developed in film noir, and from the aesthetic point of
view, they foreclosed the classic iconography of the gangster movie that with a few
exceptions continues to exist to this day. The use of explosive violence, the charismatic
good / bad guy, the glowing nocturnal streets, the fetishised weaponry, firing from moving
cars or armoured trucks, became integral to these films. In fact, all these elements became
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