The very first actor who left Al Pacino “blown away”
- Entertainment
ThePostMaster- 0
- 5 minutes read
(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros.)
The things that are meant to be will never pass us by. In fact, they might show themselves way before we even realise that they’re meant for us.
That was the full-circle phenomenon that came with a certain role that Al Pacino played during the height of his career: Tony Montana in Scarface. However, way before Pacino took on the lead in Brian De Palma’s crime flick, as an opulent, violent rise-and-fall tale of an immigrant who grows his empire to unsustainable heights, he had been mesmerised by a performance that would come to inform his career.
From a young age, the budding actor had been aware of the original Scarface, Howard Hawks’ Pre-Code film featuring Paul Muni as Tony. Made in 1932, the movie would become one of cinema’s earliest gangster films, drawing on the life of Al Capone. Of course, it wasn’t suitable for a child to be shown, so Pacino, who was born the following decade, didn’t watch the movie until he was already an established Hollywood star.
By the time he finally got around to watching it in 1974, he’d already been in The Godfather and Serpico, but it wasn’t until this moment that he admits to being truly blown away by a performance for the first time. Muni’s portrayal of Tony left him speechless, and less than a decade later, he would take a crack at bringing a modernised version of the story to the big screen.
It was this viewing of Scarface that inspired the remake to come about, with Pacino so taken by the film that he wanted to do something about it. “It was the first time in my life that I was blown away by a performance,” he told Du Jour, “It was almost uplifting”.
So, the actor set out to get filmmakers on board to make the new Scarface, contacting his agent, Martin Bregman, about the potential of remaking the classic gangster movie for the modern age. In the end, the new iteration emerged with a screenplay penned by Oliver Stone and direction from De Palma, while Bregman served as a producer. Pacino had an active role in the making of the film, including initially standing in the way of Michelle Pfeiffer, who at this point was best known for Grease 2, from being cast as Elvira.
Everything worked out perfectly in the end, with Scarface becoming one of the most legendary gangster movies of all time, highly influential and shocking in its pretty explicit look at violence, and often considered superior to its ‘30s counterpart, but really, they’re both different.
Pacino didn’t want to make a straight rip-off of the movie that he loved so much. He had been heavily inspired by this incredible performance given by Muni, which was only his third ever role, so he wanted to honour that by making a version that could also stand on its own.
Muni acted pretty frequently until the mid-1940s, then returned to the screen in 1952 with Imbarco a mezzanotte before making his final on-screen appearance in The Last Angry Man, which earned him an Oscar nomination. It’s Scarface that remains his best-appreciated role, though, having inspired Pacino and spurred the gangster genre to greatness.
