Schneider Steven - Steven jay schneider стр 41.

The films plot machinations are needed to toss the characters together, but Trouble in Paradise is less concerned with the big con than it is with companionship. Gaston initially wants Madame Colets money, but all the lonely heiress wants is Gaston, and soon the two become lovers, much to Lilys chagrin. But Trouble in Paradise is nowhere near as predictable as it seems. Love is something that cant be stolen or bought, which explains the quandary of Lubitschs compulsively criminal lead characters. As much as Gaston and Lily covet the acquisition of Madame Colets fortune, even at

the cost of their relationship, they realize their uniquely larcenous dispositions make them particularly well suited for one another. JKl

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1930s

SCARFACE: THE SHAME OF A NATION (1932)

U.S. (Caddo, United Artists) 99m BW

Director: Howard Hawks

Producer: Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes

Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Fred Pasley, Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin, W.R. Burnett, Seton I. Miller, from novel by Armitage Trail

Music: Shelton Brooks, W.C. Handy

Photography: Lee Garmes, L. William OConnell

Cast: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, Osgood Perkins, C. Henry Gordon, George Raft, Vince Barnett, Boris Karloff, Purnell Pratt, Tully Marshall, Inez Palange, Edwin Maxwell

Introducing one of cinema historys most notorious, Machiavellian monsters in the perverted Horatio Alger myth that lies at the heart of every gangster film, Scarface: The Shame of a Nation stands as the peak of its genre. And its a telling sign that Brian De Palmas 1983 version of the film, despite all the accolades accorded it, does nothing to diminish the power of Howard Hawkss original. On the contrary, like Shakespeare at his best (Macbeth might be the most obvious reference here), the films seductive combination of fascination and revulsion with its corrupted protagonist and his equally corrupted world makes up the very fabric of the drama.

Completed before Hollywoods conservative Production Code became more rigidly enforced in 1934, ex-journalist Ben Hechts screenplay uses the Al Capone legend as source materialstaging recreations of the St. Valentines Day Massacre and the murder of Big Jim Colosimoto show Prohibition-era Chicago as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Amorality is rampant: Cops are brutal and on the take, journalists are cynical muckrakers. In contrast, the Capone-like protagonist Tony Scarface Camonte (Paul Muni) is at least frank in his greedy quest for power and the almighty dollar.

The ultimate irony of Scarface is that everything goes well as long as Tony treats his killing spree as purely business. The moment his emotions come into play, hes doomed. Much can be made of the strange twist in the plot when Tony starts losing control because of his violent jealousy concerning the love affair between his sister Cesca (Ann Dvorak) and his best friend Guino Rinaldo (George Raft). This could stem from incestuous feelings for his sister, or indicate a repressed homosexual bond with his friend. Hawks effectively underlines Tonys road to ruin with heavy symbolism, achieved via expressive lighting and street signs. The gangster is initially seen as a Nosferatu-like silhouette on the wall as he commits his first murder. At the end, his final showdown is marked by cross-shaped shadows and his dead body lying in the gutter under a travel sign that reads, ironically, The world is yours. MT

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1930s

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1932)

In the seven films he made with her, Josef von Sternberg took his obsession with Marlene Dietrich to ever more extreme lengths of intensity and stylization, until both star and story were all but subsumed in a welter of spectacle and design. Coming at the midpoint of the cycle, Shanghai Express holds the elements

in near-perfect balance.

Sternberg loved to treat his films as controlled experiments in the play of light and shadow, so a plot whose action is largely confined to the eponymous train suited him perfectly. The story, such as it is, concerns a train journey from Peking to Shanghai, interrupted by a bandit attack. But the subject of the film is Dietrichs face, on which it plays an endless series of variations: veiled, shadowed, wreathed with smoke, nestling in furs or feathers, framed in intricate patterns of black on white. Dietrich herself, as the notorious China coaster, Shanghai Lily, remains enigmatic, her eyes hooded and watchful, as Sternbergand his regular cinematographer, Lee Garmesuse her face as an exquisite screen on which to project the appropriate emotions.