My film analysis

Tony Montana is the main character in Scarface. He is a political prisoner who has escaped from Cuba to get away from Castro’s regime of communism; he was after the American Dream. He fought his way to the top where he has a cocaine empire in Miami; he started of with small jobs but eventually rose to being one of the wealthiest and dangerous men in Miami.
In the opening scene to Scarface, it’s not like any other gangster/thriller film. It shows the political history in Cuba, and shows Cubans escaping to America, Shows Castro’s speech to support communism and to those who oppose it. At the very start, a script of what is happening is shown to us, and it says. ‘125,000 refugees have escaped to Florida and 25,000 of them have criminal records’. From this, we know it’s going to be a crime or thriller based film. It uses a ‘This is England’ kind of opening. It has all the events that happened in Cuba in a compilation at the opening scene. This is for us to see the struggle of the Cubans, and their escape to freedom.
Once the opening credits end, it quickly jumps to an interview with the U.S immigration and Tony Montana. The camera focuses a lot on his face, especially his reactions to the questions he’s being asked. Using mainly close ups, some of Tony Montana’s facial features come into the scene. For instance, he has a scar that goes across his eyebrow, hence the film being called Scarface, so the Mise-en-scene is shown then. Also, the camera shows Tony being extremely low; as he answers he always looks up to answer them. This shows that the Immigration officers have a lot more power than Tony at this particular stage. The camera also shows the Officers lower parts of their body, the camera is still hiding the identity of the Officers therefore showing power over Tony. In Scarface, the music being used sounds very Latin American as it’s very lively and simple. The interrogation room is very quiet, and you can only hear questions being asked and questions answered. It uses non-diegetic music at the start of the sequence, it shows the Cubans escaping to Florida, and the music is very lively and flowing. The editing is at a normal pace when the interrogation starts, but as the temperature starts to rise, the flickering between the characters gets quicker therefore causing a lot of tension to arise.
Other Important characters in the film are Manny, Tony’s sidekick, even at this stage; Manny knows what kind of a person Tony is, so doesn’t dare double cross him. Frank Lopez is another that gets introduced to us not far in the film, he recruits Tony, but Tony being mad with power, starts to sit in his boss’ seat. It’s him who gives Tony his first job, the Rubanga hit. We also get introduced to Tony and Manny’s prey, Rubanga. We learnt that he was a rich and wealthy man, but as he double crossed Castro, he had to flee the country and come to America.