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"Scarface" is the film of the Thirties which is most often brought up in discussions on the gangster movie… According to Hawks, he directed "Scarface" with the idea of telling the story of the Capone family as if they were the Borgias living in Chicago in the Twenties.... This may well be- true… At the time, however, there was much publicity to suggest that "Scarface" was the Capone story – which it certainly wasn't… It was a very good, exciting gangster film, and it stands up well when viewed today, more than 70 years on… Paul Muni gave a great performance as Tony Camonte, the scarred gang-leader, but it bears little resemblance to Capone as he really was… Camonte is tough, ruthless, a handy man with a gun and – at the end – a figure hysterically afraid of death as he battles it out with police from his steel-shuttered fortress… Capone was certainly tough and ruthless, but he tried to avoid gunplay himself and employed others to do his dirty work… He was not cowardly, and he did not die in battle… "Scarface"should be seen and remembered as a film devised to exploit the Chicago of its day – and it must be remembered that Chicago gang wars made front-page banner headlines all over the world… It is the story of a battle for power between two gangster figures: Tony Camonte and Gaffney, played by Boris Karloff… A secondary plot hinges on Camonte's strength of feeling for his sister, Cesca (Ann Dvorak), and the romance between Cesca and Camonte's henchman, Guino Rinaldo (George Raft).Eventually Camonte kills Rinaldo in the belief that he has violated Cesca – though the pair are actually married… This is the famous scene in which Rinaldo, whose trademark throughout the picture is his constant flipping and catching of a gold coin, drops out of picture as he dies... and the coin this time falls to the floor… Gaffney, the rival gang-leader, is sometimes likened to Edward "Spike" O'Donnell, with whom Capone fought a war for control of the Chicago South Side… In the film, however, the Gaffney character is totally unlike the real Spike, who was a rough-and-ready criminal of Irish descent with a tendency towards practical jokes… He and his three brothers, Steve, Walter and Tommy, did just about everything in their time, from bank robberies to strike-breaking, with a little pick-pocketing on the side… "Spike" was a devout Catholic who attended services regularly... yet his most-quoted remark is: "When arguments fail – use a black-jack."
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