The Beast of the City (1932)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Boring

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Warner Archive offers a DVD of The Beast of the City (1932), in which Walter Huston plays a career cop who tries to clean up the city, despite determined opposition from politicians, the press, the public, his superiors - and even his brother (Wallace Ford) who has made an attachment with a gangster's moll (Jean Harlow). A dark and gritty film noir (which tends to go overboard in its concluding stages), the film was financed for Metro by William Randolph Hearst as an answer to Little Caesar. Both Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were horrified by the finished film and attempted to withhold it from release. They kept it on the shelf for a year and then instructed salesmen to make little attempt to book it into theaters. The MGM brass hoped the movie would show a loss (which it did) and thus discourage moneybags Hearst from further forays into the grim and totally alien world of film noir.

While Warners was glamorizing the gangster ("Little Caesar", "The Public Enemy") the more conservative MGM turned to the police force to show the public that they also needed glorification. Even though her role in the unpopular "The Secret Six" was very secondary, Jean Harlow was rushed into it's companion piece "The Beast of the City" and her part as Daisy, the sensuous gun moll was far more memorable.The police were shown to do their duty even for an uncaring public - patrons in a speakeasy boo a raiding police group. About the only decent man in town is a police captain (Walter Huston was completely at home in police stations, prisons etc by 1932). "This town is as rotten as an open grave". Corruption even touches his family with his younger brother Ed (Wallace Ford) co-erced into crime because of his relationship with Daisy. The original story was an updating of W.R. Burnett's western novel "Saint Johnson" (1930) and it was made in the original western form as "Law and Order" (1932) - Huston also played the lead in that one as well.Police captain Jim Fitzpatrick's (Huston) failure to put racketeer Sam Belmonte (Jean Hersholt) behind bars causes him to be transferred to a quieter precinct. When he captures a pair of robbers he is promoted to police chief but his brother proves a real thorn in his side. Ed wants quick promotion and is not entirely honest - when asked to keep an eye on Daisy, he easily falls for her charms and starts to take payoffs from the gangsters she is involved with.What a seduction scene Harlow puts on - no ordinary red blooded male would be able to keep his head, certainly not a weakling like Ed. "That's not dancing - this is dancing"!!! Within minutes of meeting she is getting him drunk and seduces him with a sultry sexy dance that has him eating out of her hand. He thinks it's love but she knows exactly what she's doing. When he drunkenly tells her of an assignment he has - keeping an eye on a truck load of cash, she persuades him to fully join Belmonte's gang in stealing the shipment and his decision has repercussions for everyone. Like other reviewers I think the ending will shock but the biggest shock to me was the improvement in Jean Harlow's acting.Within ten years Wallace Ford was playing character roles but in 1932 he and Jean looked great together. It was hard to believe only the year before her acting in "The Public Enemy" was causing critics and the public to snigger, to say nothing of her harsh, trashy make up. In "The Beast of the City" she looked dazzling, acted in a natural way and got her first good notices. Mordaunt Hall, "The New York Times" - "Jean Harlow, the first of the platinum blondes, is a distinct asset to this film" and Irene Thirer of the "New York Daily News" - "Yep, the platinum blonde baby really acts in this one, mighty well"!!!

What could I tell more than the other users about that real gem from the thirties? They have already told everything. I just specify that this features reminds me Abel Ferrarra's masterpiece: " King of New York". The tale of a bunch of hard boiled cops, friends as well in the force as outside their job, a real family, who decide to wipe a gang of unassailable hoods out, by their own way. The hard way. Apply their own justice. Except that in the Ferrarra's film, the gangsters are shown with a little sympathy; Christopher Walken is a "good" gangster who want to sell drug in order to build a hospital for the homeless, something like that...In Ferrarra's film, there is no real bad guy or good guy. The audience feels sympathy for both sides: cops and hoods.In both films you find a story of a ruthless face to face between two groups. Tll their total extermination. Fierce stories but exciting. I love that...

This is a classic example of those pre-Hays Code movies of the 30s, gritty and violent steeped in a general sort of sleazy atmosphere. Harlow is terrific, especially in her first scene with Wallace Ford; sexy, funny, tough. The movie is fast-paced and has a certain style and an engaging toughness.Entertaining most of the way through, it begins to run out of energy towards the end, and also out of intelligence. While the other comments here laud the stylish, incredibly violent ending, it's really dumb, contrived and completely unconvincing. For some reason people here are so taken with its visceral effect that they ignore its utter ridiculousness. But overall this movie holds up very well for something from the 30s, and is well worth watching.