"You Need People Like Me": Demonization and Idealization of the Immigrant in the 1932 Film Scarface and its 1983 Remake

The 1932 film Scarface is a pre-Code Hollywood gangster classic about an Italian immigrant’s brutal rise and fall in Chicago’s South Side. Its 1983 remake of the same name focuses instead on the equally crime-ridden life of a Cuban immigrant in Miami. Both films have become cultural touchstones in the American consciousness but did not escape controversy at their times of release due to their alleged demonization of immigrant groups and their depiction of excessive violence. I will delve into the production processes for each of these films, focusing on the political climates surrounding the immigration and assimilation of Italians and the Marielitos — a subset of Cuban immigrants named after the Mariel boatlift by which Castro expelled them  — into the United States in the 1930s and 1980s, respectively. I will then analyze the specific ways in which each film is able to characterize the immigrant as a monster and an “other” in popular thought, while simultaneously upholding and empowering the embodiment of certain ideals cherished by the general public as typically “American values” through strong self-made men who start from nothing and work their way up to success. I find that the 1983 remake of Scarface not only recenters the previous film around Cuban immigrants, but acts as an amplifier and a careful reflection of the tropes of its predecessor. The 1983 production does this not by taking the opportunity to learn from its predecessor’s reliance on negative mythology surrounding immigrants and its weakness in combating these tropes — the immigrants (Marielitos) the remake portrays are still wrongfully demonized — but by instead attempting to criticize American society and its true power-holders more deeply than its predecessor does. Scarface 1983 tries to place the blame not on the immigrant it has made into both a monster and an ideal, but on the structure of American society and government itself. In addition, the power of filmmakers over the film industry and society at large, which the 1932 film affirmed through its use of violence, is amplified by the later film’s even more intensely violent nature.