Barbary Coast (1935)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Am I Missing Something?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

"Barbary Coast" is actually a character study, a love story set in 1850's San Francisco. It was a rough, brawling town in the days before law and order ruled the day, and here the town is run by Edward G. Robinson and his enforcer, Brian Donlevy. The lovers are Joel McCrea (tall and handsome), and Miriam Hopkins (short and pretty). Naturally, McCrea and Robinson cross paths before the picture is over.Nutshell: Hopkins gets off a boat looking for her fiancé, who was killed by Robinson. She then goes to work in the local saloon, owned by Robinson, and comes across prospector/poet McCrea while out riding one day. They are smitten. He is finished prospecting, having found much gold. He comes into town, stumbles across Hopkins in the saloon, and then things get tense and the action starts.You can almost fill in the blanks for the ending, but watch for Walter Brennan, who steals every scene he's in as a toothless no-account. The love scenes belong to Hopkins, who puts them over while McCrea is along for the ride. He always lacked acting range and this film is no exception. The action scenes are very effective and of a different sort, but this movie relies on its screenplay, which is very absorbing. I thought "Barbary Coast" was better than I expected and a cut above many actioners of the 30's.

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.

Given the array of talent assembled for this project, the result disappointed me. The script is funny and very smart, but Robinson's portrayal of an 1850s casino boss in San Francisco comes off poorly to me, especially as he basically struts and does the same act as his 20s gangster thing, but wearing puffy flamenco shirts. Hopkins is good, and very charming, in her role, which is the center of the film's plot and heart. McCrea is given a fairly one-dimensional lead. Seems to have been some confusion over what kind of film they were trying to make over at Goldwyn studios.

Apparently Sam Goldwyn picked the words Barbary Coast as a title then called in his writers and told them to write a story. That was the way they did things at Hollywood studios in the thirties.This is actually a pretty entertaining movie that catches some of the anything goes atmosphere of San Francisco in gold rush days.Edward G. Robinson is miscast (and has to wear some peculiar costumes) in his role as a bad guy but he gives it everything he's got and some of his scenes are quite effective. Miriam Hopkins is very good as a gold digger of the non mining kind and Joel Mcrea as her hearts desire spouts some poetic dialogue quite eloquently.Good drama of the typically Hollywood kind.