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Cinema's evanescence has a granular side, opening titles written on sand are washed away by waves. "The wrong side of the island" means the respectable side to the weathered B-girl (Marjorie Rambeau), an extended tracking shot guides her back to the welter of seamy dives by the waterfront. (The remarkably fluid technique suggests E.C. Segar panels dilated by Max Ophüls, another camera movement follows an order of watered-down gin from faucet to table on a waiter's wobbly tray across a teeming dance hall.) Not as hard-boiled as she pretends to be, the hostess (Helen Twelvetrees) at work with practiced sob story and pickpocketing ploy, sizing up a bulbous john: "Hey, 'bout you and me shakin' a hook, good-lookin'?" The pimp (Ricardo Cortez) keeps watch with stiletto at the ready, the sailor (Phillips Holmes) strolls in with medal and photogenically torn striped shirt. The world as bleary barrelhouse where closet vulnerability emerges between donnybrooks and gags, "a bit rough in here," just the way Tay Garnett likes it. (Pull it one way and you get Hawks' A Girl in Every Port, pull it another and there's Renoir's La Chienne.) To spill somebody's Mickey Finn can amount to a declaration of love in this grungy milieu, the heroine discovers the "glad and shivery" feeling and makes a birthday wish by blowing out matchsticks on a cupcake. Romance abuts on vaudeville, the parallel thread finds slot machine-addicted James Gleason and stuttering Harry Sweet fighting over Franklin Pangborn's derby in slapstick anticipation of Godot. "Let it steam, let it rumble / We don't mind the waves that tumble..." Walsh and Wellman offer their own versions, so does Carné (Quai des Brumes). With Thelma Todd, Slim Summerville, Stanley Fields, Matthew Betz, Mike Donlin, George Chandler, and Vince Barnett. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |