BIG CITY

US, 1937, 80 minutes, Black and white.
Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Charley Grapewin, Janet Beecher. Irving Bacon. William Demarest, Eddie Quillan.
Directed by Frank Borzage.

Big City, or The Skyscraper Wilderness, is a very minor Spencer Tracy vehicle. It was made at the time he was winning Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys' Town and making popular film like Test Pilot and San Francisco. He co-stars with Luise Rainer who had won Oscars for The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth.

Direction is by Frank Borzage who made some moving, if sentimental, comedies and dramas. This is a story about small people confronting organisation and crime in the big city. The film is brief, pleasant if at times raucous and significant only because of the stars at the height of their success. There are cameo appearances by famous boxers of the time, including Jack Dempsey, James J. Jeffries, Jim Thorpe, Man Mountain Dean and Maxie Rosenbloom. They join Spencer Tracy and the cab drivers in a punch-up with the hoodlums in the finale of the film. Minor entertainment.

1. A star vehicle for Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer? Suitable for their talents? An entertaining piece of minor Americana?

2. Brevity of the running time? Studio photography? The atmosphere of the big city - especially as seen from the point of view of migrants, taxi drivers etc.? The syndicate-type organisations and their hoodlums?

3. The old story of the little people versus the organisation? Violence. their being put upon, their rousing themselves and winning? How well illustrated was this theme?

4. Spencer Tracy as a taxi driver? An independent? Seeing him at work, his relationship with his wife., family, the apartment? Friends? The attacks on the independent cab drivers and the violence,, the destruction? His decision to go along with organisation? The exhortation to stand against them?

5. Luise Rainer as the housewife? Migrant background.. love, tenderness, support?

6. The range of relations,, family interactions? The interdependent cab drivers and their supporting one another, feeling the pressures of organisation?

7. The big city and organisation, takeovers, money-making, the use of hoodlums for violence?

8. The taxi drivers' friends and the boxers? Their coming to the aid of the hero and the spectacular punch-up at the end?

9. The popular American theme of the little man versus organisations? 'Thirties style?