The heart of Brian De Palma’s operatic gangster movie “Scarface” is unquestionably Al Pacino’s raucous portrayal as the ambitious, hot-headed Tony Montana. However, he frequently overshadows Michelle Pfeiffer’s excellent work as Elvira Hancock, Tony’s wife, who, despite receiving little screen time, nonetheless plays a captivating character. Pacino didn’t want Pfeiffer to take the job at first, despite the fact that they clicked as a couple.
“Look, can you blame him? My last credit before that was ‘Grease 2’.” In a 2017 “Tonight Show” interview with Jimmy Fallon, Pfeiffer made a joke. The lengthy and difficult audition process for the part of Elvira took place over a period of months and included numerous callbacks. Pfeiffer was a nervous young aspiring actress at the time. She was taken aback when she was told she wasn’t qualified for the role and then requested to do a screen test. To Jimmy Fallon, she said:
“I kind of drag myself, and I have, you know, just no feeling at all that I have any shot at getting this. So it kind of freed me up, you know, and sort of, I wasn’t afraid.”
Pfeiffer’s audition for Al Pacino was able to be innovative since she lacked inhibitions. She was totally immersed in the moment when she broke plates and threw them around, cutting Pacino’s hand with one of the fragments. “I saw the blood on the floor, and I thought it was my blood, but no, I’d cut this huge movie star,” Pfeiffer said to Fallon, expressing her horror.
Early on in the audition process, “Scarface” producer Martin Bregman and director De Palma deemed her “sensational,” but Pacino had his doubts. “She didn’t look right, and he was worried about that. She didn’t resemble Elvira at all, in his mind. But Bregman said in “Scarface Nation: The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America” that he was completely mistaken.” Evidently, Pacino was thinking about Glenn Close, who Bregman did not feel was appropriate for the part. Despite having the outward appearance of a trophy wife, Pfeiffer brings a lot of depth to the play.
Pfeiffer brings depth to an objectified role
During the Tribeca Film Festival’s 35th anniversary screening’s Q&A in 2018, “I’m concerned about body image as the father of a daughter, Scarface,” the moderator questioned Michelle Pfeiffer. What did you weigh before shooting this movie?” This crude question is yet another instance of how female performances are incessantly reduced to their appearances, even though Pfeiffer did lose weight for the role to show Elvira’s escalating cocaine habit. Pfeiffer’s performance is much more than just her trim frame and flawless appearance.
Elvira is portrayed by Pfeiffer as an ice princess who defends herself with sarcasm. Her aloof attitude belies a wounded young lady struggling to live in a society dominated by men. Elvira, a blonde, trim dream doll to wear on his arm, is a representation of Tony’s American Dream. “She has tiger fur. She will be mine, “As he does with the tiger he shackles to his estate, Tony vows and claims her. All that matters about Elvira is how she makes men feel powerful and how attractive she is.
Pfeiffer muses on playing a character constrained by misogyny in “Scarface Nation”:
“Sometimes, though, by playing an object you can actually say more about objectifying women than if you play somebody of strength. She was a hood ornament, like another Rolls-Royce or something, for both of the men that she was with. I felt that by playing something that mirrors someone’s life in that way, I could make a kind of feminist statement.”
Channeling her own kind of power
Feminism does not require all female characters to be role models of strength. Elvira fights her objectification head-on by publicly making jokes about the murder of her drug lord boyfriend and refusing Tony’s questions about her sex life. “Not your child am I. I’m not a baby, “She scolds him. Elvira isn’t afraid to make the arrogant men around her feel tiny by exposing their chauvinism and propensity for violent aggression as the pretend play of young boys. However, Michelle Pfeiffer expertly portrays the underlying weaknesses under Elvira’s haughty façade with her wide, haunted eyes.
Pfeiffer expertly depicts Elvira’s tragic downward trajectory. Elvira transforms into a vacant-eyed, hollow shell of her former self as she grows more and more dependant on cocaine and stuck in an unhappy marriage. We can only hope that when she finally musters the will to break away from Tony, she finds independence and does not end up being just another tool for a man to use against her. Elvira is not just considered as pretty to look at; rather, Pfeiffer’s steely acting gives the role a depth of emotion.
