BARBARY COAST
US, 1935, 91 minutes, Black and white.
Joel Mc Crea, Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan.
Directed by Howard Hawks.
Barbary Coast is a Howard Hawk's frontier film. Hawks, a noted director of action films with strong heroes and heroines, shows Miriam Hopkins here as his typical heroine, a survivor in a difficult frontier situation. Joel McCrea?, however. is a sturdier and laconic hero. Edward G. Robinson changes his locale but is the same as a gangster villain type. The film is somewhat dated now in its thirties' cinematic style and studio photography. However, it is a vigorous action piece about life in a frontier city and is interesting as an early film of Hawks who was to achieve such fame with Westerns like Red River and Rio Bravo.
1. An entertaining frontier film, action drama, human drama-romance? The reputation of Howard Hawks for tough action films and the standard of this film?
2. The conventions of the frontier Western and how well used? The arrival of the group in San Francisco, the way of life in San Francisco, the tough heroine and her linking up with the gangster, her love for the hero? Edward G. Robinson's style gangster and running of the town, his henchman, a law unto himself? Joel McCrea? as the sturdy hero? The conventional people in San Francisco - officers, police, gamblers? Miners? Satisfactory for this kind of adventure?
3. Black and white photography, studio locations? The score and the old American songs? The atmosphere of San Francisco, the mines, gambling etc.? Film-making of the thirties?
4. The plausibility of the plot - pioneering in San Francisco in the 19th century, the type of people there, out of the authority of the East, law and order? Men and women surviving in this kind of situation?
5. The audience entering the film with Swan? Her appearance on the ship, people's attention to her, her hopes for marriage? Her hardness emerging? Her surviving on arrival? Her association with Chamalis, working for him and yet despising him? Her influencing him especially as regards the newspaper? Her work at the gambling tables, the encounter with Carmichael in the rain and the talk about women with snakes in their hair, her encountering him in the casino, his losing his money, helping him, love? A strong heroine of the American West?
6. The contrast between Chamalis and Carmichael? Edward G. Robinson's style as Chamalis? tough, small, assumptions about running the town, using Knuckles for any killing, lording it over the authorities, his influence on the newspapers, the gambling? His overextending himself and his defeat? Carmichael as the strong silent type, honest, work in the mines, views on San Francisco and the Barbary Coast, disappointment with Swan, losing his money, working for Chamalis, love for Swan
and the ending?
7. Knuckles as the villain, the cold-blooded shootings, the lynching and the role of the vigilantes?
8. The portrait of the Barbary Coast and the various types presented? how well delineated: the miners and their coming to town to gamble, the Scotsman and his being shot, his friend? The Colonel and the running of the newspaper and his death? The officials?
9. How well presented was the atmosphere of the frontier in the 19th century? Its part of the heritage of the history of the United States? Influencing attitudes? Men and their ruggedness within this situation? Women and their survival? Love within this context? How well has the film stood the test of the decades?
