X Marks the Spot
The “X” is the singular, defining imagery to be found in Scarface. An “X” appears beneath the opening title and the closing title and plays a major role in every major scene and can also be found littered throughout the film. Sometimes the X is obvious such as the many X’s that show in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre film. Sometimes the X is a bit heavy-handed such as the shadow of the X that is cast by the dead body lying beneath the Undertaker sign. Occasionally, the X is subtly incorporated such as that made by the blades of a fan that is not turned on when Johnny Lovo gets what’s coming to him. And on notable occasion, the X is merely implied when Gaffney is murdered after bowling his last strike.
The Coin Flip
Tony’s number two man is shown continually flipping a coin in the air. This action became so identified with actor George Raft that it became inextricable from screen persona. In this particular film however—one in which he made the coin flip famous—serves a compelling bit of imagery that reminds the audience constantly of the dangerous unpredictability of the gangster life. Every single moment of their lives is a coin flip with mortality.
Day and Night
It is important to realize that Scarface was not the first big gangster movie. Underworld, The Racket, and Cagney’s The Public Enemy had all beaten Scarface to the punch. What sets Scarface apart is how it brings the underworld of mobsters out of the darkness and out from behind locked doors into the light. More killings and violence takes place during the day and outside the cloistered homes of these gangsters than in any of those other films. The connection between the daylight world of business and the nighttime underworld of crime is thus made tangible.
Incest
Never brought into the sphere of text, but always looming palpably as subtext, is the incestuous desire between Tony and his sister, Cesca. Not only does this almost subliminal suggestion of incest work as imagery which builds a motivation for the sublimation of Tony’s psychotic tendencies, it also is a reminder of the incestuous relationship of gangsters to each other and among each other. They may fight against each other for territory, but they are as one in their relationship to the “normal” world beyond them.
