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 Code
The 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.
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 Code
The 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.