The Scarred Face of Comedy

In Scarface, we enter a world of violence, tragedy, corruption, death, and humor – one of these things is not like the other. Clearly the use of humor in the film was intentional, the placement of certain characters and actions makes this obvious; for example, when Tony and Guino get shot at in the diner, as his ‘secretary’ attempts to have a phone conversation while under a barrage of Tommy gun fire. The use of the secretary as a comedic foil to the gun battles, crime and murder is an interesting decision, why would they do this?

As we look further, we see that Tony himself is a comedic figure, looking like a child on Christmas day when talking about the new Tommy gun, exclaiming something along the lines of, “they make machine guns you can carry now!” Or when he’s let out of prison, gibing to Guino, “Nice little thug, he give ‘em a writ of hocus pocus,” referring to the writ of Habeus corpus. Compared to the other humor in Scarface, Tony’s is somewhat twofold.

Firstly, it serves as one of the pillars of his character. He’s a jovial, driven individual that’s on his way up – so you’d better be on board or out of his way. But it also is a subtle slap in the face to society. Sure, he’s clearly opposed to the law, we see this within sixty seconds of being introduced to Tony, when he strikes a match on the officer’s badge, but his bravado of jokes is a way of saying to everyone that, morally, he has no qualms with what he’s doing.

By giving us a “hero” that’s so comedic, and giving us a movie surprisingly equally full of violence and comedy, Scarface says, “criminals don’t see anything wrong in what they are doing, in fact, they’re laughing all the way to the gallows.”