Tony Camonte, "Scarface," has been summoned by the Police Chief for questioning. Just as he is being taken away for further interrogation, his lawyer, Epstein, enters with writ of habeas corpus. We witness three typed characters here: 1) the dimunitve and gloating Jewish lawyer, "crooked" for freeing the criminal; 2) the broken tongued Italian thug with stars in his eyes (and "thousand dollar bills pasted" across them); 3) and the decidedly "unethnic," square-jawed Police Chief who has seen it all. Tony, the individual, self-prophesied for greatness, ("Maybe I'm different") clashes with experience and order in the Chief ("No, you're not. Get you in a tough spot and you'll squeal just like all the rats."). We also see the introduction of the wild west trope in the Chief's star badge and his prediction of Tony's fall into the gutter with the horses -- a leitmotif witnessed again in the second clip.

The players in this scene are the Chief, his deputy, and a newsman, who is greeted by the chief with, "What do you want?" His response: "A story. The public's interested in him [Tony]. He's a colorful character." The Chief replies with a lecture concerning the sentimentalizing and romanticizing of the criminal in society. Again, we witness reference to the west. But here the Chief does some sentimentalizing of his own, claiming the superiority of western bad men, for at least they faced each other and drew, unlike the back-stabbing of Chicago's gangsters. Throughout the film, the media is portrayed as provocateur of gangster glamorization.