The Outlaw (1943)

After watching Scarface and Jane Russell's recent death, it seemed opportune to watch The Outlaw, Howard Hughes' tribute to Billy the Kid and BOOBS. The only things I knew about the film was from Scorsese's The Aviator- where Hughes, played by Leo DiCaprio has a hearing about the sexual content of the film. Not to be prudish but there is a major sexual undercurrent to the film. Not in a bad way, it quite impressive how Hughes creates that sort of tension without any nudity or undress at all.  Of course, when i say undress - I mean underwear. Jane Russell probably wasn't even wearing any underwear and I would be prepared to testify to that. I feel like that would be a subject on was educated enough to speak on having seen The Outlaw. Besides that you'd have to be supremely puritanical to find anything seedy about this film. It's crazily good natured for a western. It's not particularly violent. If anything it's rather queer and silly. Now whoa-whoa-whoa - not the modern parlence of queer, but the classic use of queer: 'a strange or unconventional from the average viewpoint' although it does pretty queer towards the end. Like really queer.
Where was I? Yeah so, this film is not conventional in its conventions at all.  The soundtrack is about 5seconds ahead of the action in the film. I was watching this on IPlayer- I thought the streaming was out of sync. Since its a western, as expected there are showdowns aplenty but Hughes defuses any tension by making intensional funnys accompanied by a kazoo solo.
Despite these factors, you enjoy The Outlaw because it's a bit kooky when it should be tense because you've seen a million Westerns that play like that and in the end,  they all pretty much run together after a while. Hughes realised this on the making and saw no harm; he's knew and respected that John Ford type jawn but wanted to go another way and no, it doesn't play in the way he'd hoped but i'm sure the 2nd World War 2, there was nothing like this around but it still hold up 70years later to look at and watch due to charm and fun.
Like Jane Russell's BOOBS.

Scarface (1931)

I think in terms of remakes, the 80's version of Scarface is better than this, the 30's Howard Hawks original. 
The stories are essentially the same with a smart thug calculating his way to the top and be king gangster running booze (not the coke of the 80's), with dollops of violence and killen-ings. Other common threads include Tony's unhealthy if more subtle interest in his sister and his lieutenant and her get into a relationship too.
Also 80's Scarface has an extra hour on this one but De Palma's version hardly has any fat on it's running time.
Paul Muni is great and necessarily charismatic as Tony but when we're talking about iconic gangsters, Pacino's Tony Montana is just the definition of maniacal blind ambition -Muni's Tony at least has trace amounts of empathy. Karen Morley is just as great as the moll Tony's affections are vying for- the one you'll remember Michelle Pfeiffer playing in the remake.
You can see why Hawks was so influential to Tarantino and Scorsese- there are so many visual flourishes. Anyone who knows anything about Hawks, knows he was thought quite the exploitation director at the time but 80years later, his Scarface will hardly shock anyone with it's PG violence but i'd counter it's just as exciting and i'm going to say 'jaunty', in the way only films of the 30's could be. Actually the one thing 30's Scarface has over the 80's one is, it has a very ambitious car chase (of the 30's). (FFWD to between 1min18secs - 2min-20secs)

I think the main thing, De Palma and Oliver Stone's Scarface has over this one is major tension, like that of the chainsaw scene but obviously 50years later the limits of taste had... Well, there were few limits left by the 80's.


I watched Scarface (1932) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Blue Valentine (2010)...