‘Scarface exhibits the fancy footwork of a man who understands psychology as well as choreography, who can move right into a scene and keep an audience hypnotised by the cold smell of evil which at any moment, it seems, may slurp down from the screen and contaminate the front rows.’

…and gives specific examples of such:

‘In Scarface, the ‘X’ behind the titles reappears traced in light across two scenes featuring a rival gangster who is soon to get his comeuppance, and again in the form of his bowls score just a few seconds before he is mown down.  Of such visual touches are memorable movies made.’

(Martin Scorsese would pay his respects to this particular visual cue, in The Departed).

Paul Muni made a memorable villain:

‘Through it all the wide-shouldered star moves like King Kong, with the same passionate but limited range of emotions… he is simply the most dangerous element in a dark fresco of savagery so intense as to seem almost supernatural.’

LH probably caught up with this seminal gangster movie just after the war, when the British embargo on imported movies was still in place, and so the cinemas had to show re-runs.  He wasn’t blind, however, to the deficiencies of these early gangster films:

‘They lack refinement of film style, they are slowly edited, with too many fades to black and practically no musical score to underline the narrative; but they were put together by seasoned film journalists who knew how to shock, and they bathed in the talents of art directors and cameramen who knew how to make the most of their drab backgrounds.’

Paul Muni stars in a depiction of the life and crimes of Al Capone.  Halliwell was impressed –

‘The cumulative effect of this remarkable melodrama… is to make one shudder for the whole of humanity.’

LH recognised the tricks of technique employed by director Howard Hawks: