Supelice Dreadfully Boring

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

gab-14712 I miss films like 1935's Barbary Coast. These are the kind of old-fashioned melodramas that have been driven to extinction. I am not entirely sure that this movie would have been the best kind of old-fashioned film, but it has all the elements that I come to expect from these type of films. For the most part, the film was very entertaining. There is a romanticized and somewhat crass love triangle that lays at the heart of the film. I like this unconventional (for its time) love triangle because it plays to the dark side. The cinematography really plays well to the tone and the atmosphere. There is an abundance of fog and that really gives a sense of mystery to the city of San Francisco, which was known as Barbary Coast to its citizens during the time period the film is set in. This film was directed by Howard Hawks, who is known as one of cinema's greatest auteurs. It is not his greatest film, and I would even call this film a major B-production (which means it still is good, but not great.) This marks Hawk's first production with famed producer Samuel Goldwyn. For this movie, Goldwyn came up with the title and tasked two of Hollywood's best writers; Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur to create a story under that title. In addition to the love story, they created themes you could pull out of a Western. They created a tale about how you can survive in the lawless West. There is this gold digger named Mary Rutledge (Miriam Hopkins) who arrives by boat to the shores of San Francisco to meet up with her mail-order husband. She comes to find out that he mysteriously died after falling in debt to a gangster named Louis Chamalis (Edward G. Robinson). Louis also happened to be the owner of the nightclub where Mary's husband owed debt to. Mary decides to get work as a roulette operator in the saloon of Chamalis. He admits to her that he has fallen in love with her, but she does not return his love. During one walk in a rainstorm, she falls in love after meeting gold prospector Jim Carmichael (Joel McCrea). Jim is on his way home with several bags full of gold he found. Chamalis is going to do all he can to grab that gold and make Mary love him the way he loved her. The movie has several great performances to work with. Miriam Hopkins is a great actress, although stories have been told how hard it was to work with her. Maybe her personality worked well with the type of unsympathetic character she was portraying, because I could not stand her character for a long part of the movie and that is how it was meant to be. Edward G. Robinson gave a great, villainous performance. He looked every part of the villain type, even with that ugly-looking earring on his one ear. The rest of the cast including the likes of Walter Brennan and David Niven in a very early cameo role do a great job. The one thing that stood out to me the most was how women was portrayed. Hopkins portrays a character who is strong-willed and performs tasks that guys would do (remember this film came out in 1935.) This was a rarity for its time. Barbary Coast is a lesser Howard Hawks film, but this is a legend we are talking about. The movie was still a very entertaining ride from start to finish. This film might even have the only rowboat chase scene in any movie ever released, so that is another reason why you might want to give this oldie a watch. My Grade: B

weezeralfalfa Especially in the early decades of talkies, the rowdy Barbary coast of San Francisco was a popular story locale for Hollywood films. These often featured a self-made kingpin as the lead male and a young naive woman from the East, who becomes the star attraction of the kingpin's main business establishment, as the lead female. Some examples include "Frisco Kid", released the same year as this film, "San Francisco", released the next year, and the later Fox musical "Hello, Frisco, Hello". As kingpins go, Eddie Robinson's pugnacious, power-driven character: the colorful Luis Chamalis, is portrayed as an extreme version, claiming to own about everything and everybody worth owning in SF(no doubt a gross exaggeration).I'm very surprised that no one has noted the striking parallels between the plot and characters of this film with the later "The Sea Wolf", which again has Eddie Robinson hamming it up as a supertyrant, who knows his time as such is limited, but would rather go down with his ship than relinquish his all powerful position. In "The Sea Wolf", Ida Lupino serves as the equivalent of Miriam Hopkins(as Mary Rutledge) in the present film. Literary Alexander Knox and drifter John Garfield serve as a combo of the characters portrayed by Joel McCrea, Frank Craven and Harry Carry in the present film, who provide the most effective male resistance against the bully. Also, fog is a frequent feature of the outdoor scenes in both these B&W films.Eddie and Mariam together carry this film, both skilled in imparting great melodramatic intensity to their characters. In the first half of the film, Mariam's Mary('Swan' to Chamalis) appears to be the female equivalent of Chamalis's amoral hustler character. On the other hand, she appears to be the only person who can influence Chamalis to tone down his cruel and murderous deeds to maintain his status as the de facto boss of SF. Whereas Chamalis appears to be irredeemably evil, until the very end, when he knows his game is up, Mariam's character is eventually revealed as more complex. She can no longer stomach her role in cheating prospectors out of all their gold, and as the moll of a man as cruel and murderous as Chamalis. Thus, she eventually succumbs to the initially repulsed overtures of handsome, laconic, literary, native NYC prospector Jim Carmichael(Joel McCrea), who agrees to do menial jobs for Chamalis to earn a ticket back to NYC, after losing all his gold to Chamalis's fixed gambling wheel, hosted by Mary. Somehow, Jim detects a moral Mary underneath her facade as a cheating hustler. Whereas Mary initially mocks Jim's easy going poetic persona, she eventually accepts his offer to take her back to their native NYC. Naturally, Chamalis is opposed to this development.As is true in some other films, McCrea's character, who serves as the romantic lead, is not the lead male(a villain in this case), nor the main dramatic hero. True, he offers to provide Mary with an acceptable avenue of escape from Chamalis's world, but it's Jed Slocum(Harry Cary), as the leader of the vigilante committee, and Colonel Cobb(Frank Craven), as the newspaper owner-editor, who are the main heroes of the movement to destroy Chamalis's evil empire.Although Brian Donlevy, as Chamalis's chief bouncer and hatchet man:'Knuckles', doesn't have a great deal to say, this role catapulted his film career. A few years later, he would be McCrea's chief adversary in Cecil de Mille's epic western "Union Pacific". Charismatic Walter Brennan, as "Old Atrocity" is a significant player in Chamalis's operations, if he receives no respect. Besides charging outrageous sums to ferry new arrivals from ships to shore, he talks up Chamalis's establishment to prospectors.Apparently, he has a life-long history of criminal doings all over the US...Near the end of the film, 'Old Atrocity', Mary, and even Chamalis perform acts relating to Jim that offer a small measure of redemption for their evil doings. Knucles doesn't get a chance for redemption. The vigilante committee took care of him first, in a crackdown on Chamalis's empire.The background and very limited stage music is almost exclusively Stephen Foster standards, especially "Jeanne, with the Light Brown Hair". Foster composed most of his well -known songs from 1848-54. Only "Oh, Suzanna" was composed just in time for the '49ers. If this story takes place in 1850, "The Camptown Races", featured in one scene, would have been a current hit. "Jeanne" wasn't composed until 1854.

Igenlode Wordsmith Edward G. Robinson -- with his frog-face, his embroidered waistcoats, and his single earring -- totally owns this film in the role of Louis Chamalis, self-made saloon king of San Francisco at the time of the Gold Rush. Brian Donlevy also makes a notable impression in a classic black-hat role, as Louis' cool-headed enforcer, and Joel McCrea, in a change from later laconic Western roles, is a whimsical young poet who proves a surprisingly 'good loser'.And where the film scores, for me, is in these unexpected touches; characters almost never do either what social convention or, more subtly, cinematic conventions would lead us to expect. "Marriage? That must have been somebody else..." The final scenes -- in which the villain defies all plot expectations by sparing the hero's life, winning the heroine's hand, and then throwing it all back in her face with a raised hat and a roughness that spares her his knowledge that he is walking to a certain, ugly death -- are nerve-shaking in their intensity. (And far from being a plot cop-out, this is the final fruition of depths to the character that have been developed throughout: Louis Chamalis, over whom only his 'Swan' has any influence at all, yet who cannot be content with the bargain that yields him her body and not her heart, dominates as the antihero of the whole picture.)The script is good, and Walter Brennan (whose role was vastly expanded during shooting from what was originally a three-day bit-part) in particular makes the most of it. Miriam Hopkins is perhaps more effective (and probably more enjoyable) as Louis' cynically pragmatic equal than she is as the redeemed 'fallen woman'; McCrea is unexpectedly engaging as the naive but philosophical youngster who, somewhat late in the day, crosses her path. Much play is made of the San Francisco fog, while "I Dream of Jeannie (with the Light-Brown Hair)" is, to my taste, somewhat over-used in the soundtrack.I found the film a good one, and much more rewarding than biographer Todd McCarthy's dismissal of it as "nominally entertaining in a bland way" ('Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood') would suggest.

kyle_furr I wasn't expecting much when I watched this, but It's pretty good. It's set in San Francsico in 1849 during the gold rush. It's got a great cast like Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, Harry Carey, Brian Donlevy and Walter Brennan. It was also directed by Howard Hawks. Watch it if your a fan of the cast.