I Cover the Waterfront
by James Cruze
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DVD details
Actor: Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maurice BlackDirector: James Cruze
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 73 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-01-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Alpha Video
DVD Reviews of I Cover the Waterfront
DVD Review: Stylish Pre-code Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
"I'll be seein' you." -- Ben Lyon
"You've seen enough of me already." -- Claudette Colbert
Everything about this pre-code film from 1933 is stylish, including a lovely Claudette Colbert and Ben Lyon in one of his best roles. Director James Cruz and photographer Ray June used a lens wipe technique to transition from scene to scene and the harbor is beautifully shot. Based on Max Miller's book, Wells Root's screenplay is frank and mature rather than risque, separating this pre-code film from others. It is steeped in reality rather than sensationalism and for that reason remains today one of the best from those first few years of sound films.
A yong Claudette Colbert gives a subtle performance as Julie Kirk, the daughter of a salty smuggler along the harbor. There is nothing subtle about her magnetism, however, which lights up the screen. Ben Lyon also shines as newsman Joseph Miller. Bored and after a big story that will take him away from the waterfront, he decides to romance Julie in order to get to her father, Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), who has been smuggling Chinese into the harbor with deadly results. Colbert and Lyon are terrific as the flirting begins to feel like something more at the same time the Coast Guard closes in on her dad, and Joseph his big story.
Cruz films everything that happens between Julie and Joseph, both the serious and the playful, in a natural way. It is both a frank and romantic view of two people feeling each other out and slowly beginning to love one another. Even the scene on the beach when a naked Julie waits behind a rock for the brash Joseph, whom she's just met, to give her back her clothes brings a smile rather than a raised eyebrow. A scene where Julie keeps her pop from getting rolled at Mother Morgan's "Boarding House" but feels sorry for the girl and leaves her some money is not there for shock, but to show the heart and character of Julie.
Hobart Cavanaugh gives good support as Miller's often drunk news pal McCoy. Once Eli is shot and on the lam, Julie will have to choose between the man she once trusted and saving her father. The famous scene onboard the Santa Madre prison ship where a shakled Julie doesn't put up much of a fuss when Joseph finally gets the kisses he's been begging for is handled with sexy charm. A fine score which includes the famous title song adds to the special mood of this great pre-code classic. A must see film for Colbert fans and fans of pre-code films.
DVD Review: Smuggling scrutinized from a journalistic point of view
Summary: 4 Stars
This film, that is no real thriller but has to do with crime, shows how the smuggling of goods or people (in this case Chinese people) into American society is not done for any political or moral reason, but only to make a profit, even if it is paid by the smuggled people with hard cash or who may even die in the adventure. This film shows the responsibility of a journalist to expose such facts but he will encounter the resistance of many people. His boss first who will only question the quest from the viewpoint of the profit he can make out of it. His colleagues who only see him as running after glory and fame, if not money. Many other people in society who will see the journalist as a meddler in other people's business, even if this business is criminal. Finally this film shows how a dying father may decide to save the life of his worst enemy for the sake of his daughter's love. Love could be stronger than hatred and death. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
DVD Review: Joseph M Schenck presents
Summary: 2 Stars
Director James Cruze's film is set in a fishing waterfront area of California during the Depression, where Ben Lyon, a reporter for The Standard newspaper, is trying to get evidence against the Chinese immigrant smuggler father of Claudette Colbert. The screenplay is based on the bestseller by Max Miller and describes the Chinese as "chinks", with a brothel being named a "boarding house". Colbert gets a funny line when Lyon shackles her to a torture device in a ship's museum, and kisses her, and she replies "That WAS torture". There is the implausibility of a bandaid being applied to someone after back surgery!, but also a spit putting out someone's lit cigarette, and a shark attack at sea.
As well as proving a joke about a large worker at the "boarding house", Lyon's drunken friend Hobart Cavanaugh is also responsible for 2 subtextual moments which are far more shocking than Colbert's initial apearance supposedly naked. In one, Cavanaugh and Lyon share a bed, and in the second, thinking Cavanaugh has cleaned his house, Lyon says "If you could only cook" and Cavanaugh strikes a fey pose.
The soundtrack has long periods of silence against the dialogue, then intermittent jazz music to play over scenes between Lyon and Colbert, with the love scenes getting serious romantic music.
Cruze also uses a diagonal screen wipe often.
To compensate for Lyon's lack of screen charisma, Colbert is the best thing going here, funny and sassy when she slaps another woman. In one scene she uses a wheazy emotional voice for anger, and her favoured left side to the camera is not so noticable as in her later films.
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