Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

kidboots Reliance Pictures was an off shoot of Edward Small productions and was also responsible for some really interesting films ("Palooka" (1934), an excellent adaptation of the Joe Palooka comic strip with Jimmy Durante and "Let "em Have It" (1935), a dynamic story about a ruthless gangster played by Bruce Cabot) during it's short life. James Cruze was hired by Reliance to direct it's first film in 1933, "I Cover the Waterfront". Based loosely on the best selling expose by reporter Max Miller, the film combined lurid fact with fiction, sprinkled with chilling drama.When reporter Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is called out to report on a nude bather (pretty risqué even for 1933!!) he meets Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) and realises her father is Eli Kirk, an old fisherman, who he has suspected for a long time is involved in a smuggling racket. He is - people smuggling!!!and he is cold blooded enough to think nothing of throwing a chinaman overboard when the customs officers get too close. The one person he loves unconditionally is his daughter Julie but she has suspected for a while that something is troubling her father. Miller starts to romance Julie - to see what she knows, but of course the inevitable happens and they fall in love.Claudette Colbert and Ben Lyon were the nominal stars but the real reason to watch is Ernest Torrence. He had always been a menacing villain ever since portraying the degenerate Luke Hatfield in "Tol'able David" (1921) but in this movie he really outdoes himself as the fearsome tobacco spitting killer, who will stop at nothing to avoid detection of his smuggling racket. An amazing story, according to "Human Monsters", involves a harpooning expedition, where several twenty foot sharks were caught for the scene in which illegal immigrants were hidden in the shark carcasses. Special breathing masks attached to snorkels enabled the Chinese extras to survive the scenes in which they are bound in chains, inside the sharks. "I Cover the Waterfront" also boasted a popular theme song, which became a jazz standard, covered by many artists, including Billie Holiday.Recommended.

robert-temple-1 This film was excellently directed by James Cruze, best known for 'The Great Gabbo' (1929) with Erich von Stroheim, and the Will Rogers vehicle, 'Mr. Skitch' (1933). Cruze died rather young, and has never been properly appreciated. Here he has made a gritty and realistic drama of the California waterfront with lots of harrowing location footage shot at sea showing the dangers of shark fishing. Apparently, great white sharks were hunted by harpoon from small rowboats, and here we see just how wrong this can go. The story is all about Claudette Colbert, here as radiant as ever she was, despite the fact that all the characters in the film including herself are morally ambivalent at best. Her father is a ruthless people smuggler who does not hesitate to throw a Chinese illegal immigrant overboard to save himself from discovery by the Coast Guard, but despite being this sort of character, he is powerfully played by character actor Ernest Torrence as someone entitled to our sympathy, and Claudette goes on loving him despite his crimes, which surely must have left some touches of mildew on her supposedly stainless character? As for her love interest, the dogged newspaper reporter played by Ben Lyon, who is sick of the waterfront and wants to go back to the sanity of Vermont, his own character flaws are wide enough to drive a rather large fishing boat through. All of these iniquities are glossed over, as we are encouraged to root for the romance of this couple, and we very quickly drown in the deep pools of Claudette's soulful eyes (which, by the way, has anybody ever noticed, are too far apart). This is absolutely not a sugary Hollywood drama. Its moral ambiguity possibly makes it all the more interesting.

jesswis For those who like "It Happened One Night", read = fans of great quotes, the boozer/ace/snoopy journalist flicks, or Claudette Colbert's big doe eyes, it's a must see film. Add to that the titillating and graphic aspects of the film, which was made only one year before the 1934 amendment of the Hayes motion picture production code* and you have a film or media history lover's paradise. I'm talking same-sex bed sharing, white people being restrained, graphic deaths, explicit techniques for breaking the law; the works. That's pretty much where the plot twists begin and end, but it's enough to keep a viewer, uh, captive. Anyway, the film is based on a book by a reporter who wrote about the shipping and fishing docks on the Pacific Ocean in the 1930s. There's unemployment and there's the black market; there's those who survive by any means necessary, and those who just sink for lack of work. And then there's journalistic integrity somewhere in the hazy mix.With an editor who won't leave him alone because the leads are constantly rolling in, wannabe investigative reporter Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) can't get a decent night's rest from his waterfront beat. Forced to cover everything from bootleggers to herring stench, mob arrests to nude swimmers, he's got no choice- he'd be out a job if he doesn't jump when the boss says so. His pantheon of sources, all characters, comes to include the daughter (Claudette Colbert at her sassy best)of his favorite mark for reporting: Eli Kirk, a kingpin of the docks and bootlegger extraordinaire. Seeing his in with Kirk's daughter, Julie, Miller dogs the seafarer, convinced he can pin him with illegal immigration of Chinese workers (whose lives are quickly extinguished by smugglers if the KGB-like Coast Guard should come their way, sirens blasting).Miller's editor, unlike the fish in whose bellies Kirk so often carries his bottles, doesn't bite, reminding his ace that he needs to prove it with facts, not hunches. So Miller sets out to use Julie, the captain's daughter, to prove it. Alas, as can be expected, love gets in the way. And he soon learns she may not bargain easily when it comes to her father. Will Miller be able to unearth the smugglers and get the girl or will he lose his editor's patience, steamy love affair, and his job in the process?The movie's got more life, wit, and zest in presenting determination and desperation by far than Grapes of Wrath (the movie). *From Wikipedia: 1934 changes to the CodeThe Motion Picture Association of America responded to criticism of the racy and violent films of the early 1930s by strengthening the code. An amendment to the code in June of 1934 prohibited any reference in a motion picture to illicit drugs, homosexuality, premarital sex, profanity, prostitution, and white slavery.

marxi Mild Spoilers Ahead - Please Take Note.I Cover the Waterfront is a 1933 movie featuring Claudette Colbert. Film buffs may wish to see it because she is in it. She is a vivacious actress and has screen charisma.The film also has other things to commend it such as the photography of the waterfront circa 1933 that is interesting. There are also some engrossing plot elements involving the smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants and the use of huge sharks in the process.Ernest Torrence is also interesting in his role as the father of the Claudette Colbert character. Ben Lyon is okay as her character's love interest. I must say that all the performances in this movie did seem to be a bit forced and unnatural and I felt this throughout the film.My reaction is that the overall cinematic synergy of I Cover The Waterfront is not good. The film at times is gritty and hard hitting and at other moments tries to be sappy and cutesy. The combination does not work well in this film. For that reason, it is far from a classic or enjoyable film and is more important from the standpoint of being an antique. I would only recommend it for film buffs interested in Claudette Colbert or in films of the period. I rate it a 70 percent or a C - on my scale.