The film stars Paul Muni as Italian immigrant gangster Antonio "Tony" Camonte who violently rises through the Chicago gangland, with a supporting cast that includes George Raft and Boris Karloff.

Audience reception was positive, but censors banned the film in several cities and states, forcing Hughes to remove it from circulation and store it in his vault.

In 1920s Chicago, an Italian immigrant and ambitious low-level thug Tony "Scarface" Camonte works as a bodyguard for crime lord "Big" Louis Costillo.

Lovo takes over Costillo's territory in the South Side and has Tony and his associates, the dim-witted Angelo and the handsome playboy Guino "Little Boy" Rinaldo, supervise a lucrative bootlegging operation selling illegal beer to all of the bars there and forcing out rivals.

Returning home, Tony learns from his mother, who has often warned him of his bad behavior, that Cesca has moved in with another man and rushes over to find her with Guino.

[10] Trail wrote for a number of detective story magazines during the early 1920s, but died of a heart attack at the age of 28, shortly before the release of Scarface.

Hughes asked Ben Hecht, who had won the first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1929 for his silent crime film Underworld, to be head writer.

[15] Over a game of golf, Hughes promised to drop the lawsuit (irrelevant as it had already been dismissed by the judge), and by the eighteenth hole, Hawks had become interested in directing the film.

This, including other alterations made to characters and other identifying locations to maintain anonymity, were due to censorship and Hawks's concern about the overuse of historical details.

[33] Hawks and Hughes found casting difficult as most actors were under contract and studios were reluctant to allow their artists to freelance for independent producers.

[43] Dvorak had to both receive permission from her mother Anna Lehr and to win a petition presented to the Superior Court to be able to sign on with Howard Hawks as a minor.

In September 1931, a rough cut of the film was screened for the California Crime Commission and police officials, neither of whom thought the movie was a dangerous influence for audiences or would elicit a criminal response.

The pre-Code era is characterized by its informal and haphazard screening and regulation of film content, before the establishment of the Production Code Administration (PCA) on July 1, 1934.

According to the Hays Office, Scarface violated the Code, because the film elicited sympathy for Muni's character, and it revealed to youth a successful method of crime.

In addition to the violence, the MPPDA felt an inappropriate relationship between the main character and his sister was too overt, especially when he holds her in his arms after he slaps her and tears her dress; they ordered this scene be deleted.

Hughes, in order to receive the MPPDA's approval, deleted the more violent scenes, added a prologue to condemn gangsterism, and wrote a new ending.

[75] The serious play Tony and his friends go to see, leaving at the end of Act 2, is John Colton and Clemence Randolph's Rain, based on W. Somerset Maugham's story "Miss Sadie Thompson".

"[83] Variety cited Scarface as having "that powerful and gripping suspense which is in all gangster pictures is in this one in double doses and makes it compelling entertainment", and that the actors play, "as if they'd been doing nothing else all their lives".

[91] Will Hays wrote to the ambassador in Italy, excusing himself from scrutiny by stating the film was an anachronism because it had been delayed in production for two years and was not representative of the current practice of censorship at the time.

The critics' consensus reads: "This Scarface foregoes his "little friend" and packs a different kind of heat, blending stylish visuals, thrilling violence, and an incredible cast.

Most of the violence in the film is shown through montage, as scenes go by in sequence, showing the brutal murders that Tony and his gang commit such as roughing up bar owners, participating in a drive-by bombing, and massacring seven men against a wall.

A scene shows a peel-off calendar rapidly changing dates while shot by a machine gun, making the excessive violence clear.

His consumption serves to symbolize the disintegration of values of modernity, specifically represented by his poor taste and obsession with money and social status.

Throughout the film, Gaffney's movement is restricted by both setting and implication because of the crowded spaces in which he is shown onscreen and his troupe of henchmen by whom he is constantly surrounded.

Upon the time of his death, he had accumulated many "objects" that portray the success suggested by the American Dream: his own secretary, a girlfriend of significant social status (more important even is that she was the mistress of his old boss), as well as a fancy apartment, big cars, and nice clothes.

When Camonte is killed in the street outside his building, the camera pans up to show the billboard, representative of the societal paradox of the existence of opportunity yet the inability to achieve it.

In 1979, three years after his death, Summa Corporation, which controlled his estate, sold the rights to Scarface, along with seven other films to Universal Pictures, which sparked the 1983 remake starring Al Pacino.

[136] Paul Muni's performance in Scarface as "the quintessential gangster anti-hero" contributed greatly to his rapid ascent into his acclaimed film career.

Raft, in the film's second lead, had learned to flip a coin without looking at it, a trait of his character, and he made a strong impression in the comparatively sympathetic but colorful role.

The studio claims the new film is neither a sequel nor a remake, but will take elements from both the 1932 and the 1983 version,[154] including the basic premise of a man who becomes a kingpin in his quest for the American Dream.