JohnHowardReid This museum piece will interest only rabid Claudette Colbert fans and dyed-in-celluloid film buffs. James Cruze's direction is totally and inexcusably routine, almost all his scenes shot in either long, static takes or monotonously intercut reverse angles. Worse, the action scenes are few and poorly staged. Cruze uses very little camera movement, though admittedly what little he does employ is very effective — the camera pulling back from the piano to Torrence; the lengthy tracking shot of Colbert and Lyon taking Torrence home. Also on the reverse side of the ledger, the script is overloaded with banal dialogue — though Hobart Cavanaugh's tippling reporter is allowed one really amusing riposte — most of it delivered at a rapid pace by an extremely wooden Ben Lyon. But, luckily for us, Miss Colbert is as entrancing as ever. Even a rotten vehicle like this cannot dim her charm. Her presence is undoubtedly the film's sole recommendation — a fact realized by the photographer who gives her many attractive close-ups. Ernest Torrence, on the other hand, over-acts.

bkoganbing I Cover The Waterfront stars Ben Lyons and Claudette Colbert and it concerns reporter Lyons trying to uncover a smuggling racket by Colbert's father Ernest Torrance. When all else fails, Lyons goes on a romantic campaign to win Colbert and maybe get a line on what her father is doing. If it was liquor and this film was made at the tail end of Prohibition that might be one thing. But he's smuggling illegal Chinese immigrants and has no compunctions about throwing them overboard should the Coast Guard get too close. Torrance who is best known for playing Saint Peter in Cecil B. DeMille's King Of Kings makes his farewell performance in this in a role 180 degrees polar opposite of Peter. He's a man who's totally lost his moral compass and regards the Chinese as cargo to be jettisoned. His attitude is quite typical of the West Coast which was flooded with Chinese and Japanese immigrants starting with the California Gold Rush and the opening of Japan. The Oriental was regarded as cheap labor and nothing more. So Torrance takes his money and jettisons his human cargo when the heat is on. As it is he's got quite the gimmick for concealing the cargo you have to see the film for.Of course Claudette just thinks Torrance making a good living as a fisherman. And Lyons while putting on the moves to get information falls in love with her. The inevitable consequences follow.Hobart Cavanaugh plays one his best drunks, a milquetoast when sober and a guy who gets real aggressive as long as Lyons is around to fight his battles. Given the ever raging battle over illegal immigration, I Cover The Waterfront has a relevancy for today as well.

kidboots Reliance Pictures was an off shoot of Edward Small productions and was also responsible for some really interesting films ("Palooka" (1934), an excellent adaptation of the Joe Palooka comic strip with Jimmy Durante and "Let "em Have It" (1935), a dynamic story about a ruthless gangster played by Bruce Cabot) during it's short life. James Cruze was hired by Reliance to direct it's first film in 1933, "I Cover the Waterfront". Based loosely on the best selling expose by reporter Max Miller, the film combined lurid fact with fiction, sprinkled with chilling drama.When reporter Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is called out to report on a nude bather (pretty risqué even for 1933!!) he meets Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) and realises her father is Eli Kirk, an old fisherman, who he has suspected for a long time is involved in a smuggling racket. He is - people smuggling!!!and he is cold blooded enough to think nothing of throwing a chinaman overboard when the customs officers get too close. The one person he loves unconditionally is his daughter Julie but she has suspected for a while that something is troubling her father. Miller starts to romance Julie - to see what she knows, but of course the inevitable happens and they fall in love.Claudette Colbert and Ben Lyon were the nominal stars but the real reason to watch is Ernest Torrence. He had always been a menacing villain ever since portraying the degenerate Luke Hatfield in "Tol'able David" (1921) but in this movie he really outdoes himself as the fearsome tobacco spitting killer, who will stop at nothing to avoid detection of his smuggling racket. An amazing story, according to "Human Monsters", involves a harpooning expedition, where several twenty foot sharks were caught for the scene in which illegal immigrants were hidden in the shark carcasses. Special breathing masks attached to snorkels enabled the Chinese extras to survive the scenes in which they are bound in chains, inside the sharks. "I Cover the Waterfront" also boasted a popular theme song, which became a jazz standard, covered by many artists, including Billie Holiday.Recommended.

robert-temple-1 This film was excellently directed by James Cruze, best known for 'The Great Gabbo' (1929) with Erich von Stroheim, and the Will Rogers vehicle, 'Mr. Skitch' (1933). Cruze died rather young, and has never been properly appreciated. Here he has made a gritty and realistic drama of the California waterfront with lots of harrowing location footage shot at sea showing the dangers of shark fishing. Apparently, great white sharks were hunted by harpoon from small rowboats, and here we see just how wrong this can go. The story is all about Claudette Colbert, here as radiant as ever she was, despite the fact that all the characters in the film including herself are morally ambivalent at best. Her father is a ruthless people smuggler who does not hesitate to throw a Chinese illegal immigrant overboard to save himself from discovery by the Coast Guard, but despite being this sort of character, he is powerfully played by character actor Ernest Torrence as someone entitled to our sympathy, and Claudette goes on loving him despite his crimes, which surely must have left some touches of mildew on her supposedly stainless character? As for her love interest, the dogged newspaper reporter played by Ben Lyon, who is sick of the waterfront and wants to go back to the sanity of Vermont, his own character flaws are wide enough to drive a rather large fishing boat through. All of these iniquities are glossed over, as we are encouraged to root for the romance of this couple, and we very quickly drown in the deep pools of Claudette's soulful eyes (which, by the way, has anybody ever noticed, are too far apart). This is absolutely not a sugary Hollywood drama. Its moral ambiguity possibly makes it all the more interesting.