The 1932 movie was based on a novel of the same title written by "Armitage Trail." This was a pen name for a Hollywood writer who didn't want to piss off the Scarface mob in his depiction of a lead character, Tony Camonte, who was clearly a fictional stand-in for the very real, and still powerful Al Capone, who was known as Scarface Al. The basic elements of the Al Pacino movie are in the original novel and the 1932 movie: the rise up the ranks, the killing of the boss, the "thing" for his sister, and the killing of his best friend over his sister. I read the novel back in 1961. It's now out of print. Back then, a "classic gangster movie" would be Jimmy Cagney's Public Enemy, Edward G. Robinson's Little Caesar, or Paul Muni's Scarface (which was still out of public circulation by that time. It was considered too violent for T.V. How times have changed!).