Barbary Coast

Howard Hawks – 1935 – USA

Luxuriating in any of Howard Hawks’ dozen-or-so top-tier films is like enjoying a full-course meal after subsisting on nothing but Skittles for weeks.  This always comes as a surprise to me after being inundated with the gutless, pretentious tripe that passes for serious filmmaking in the past quarter-century.  Hawks worked in the era before film schools and the great split between art films and commercial films, and therefore practised an art form that – (as Robin Wood has put it) – communicated to casual and intellecual audiences equally well without needing to be dumbed-down on one extreme or explicated by critics on the other.  The formal ease and logic of Barbary Coast’s style is a prime example.  Every frame is so perfectly composed and every movement so beautifully executed; it reminds us that cinema was infinitely stronger and a more specialized art before it became so self-conscious.  Edward G. Robinson is a boomtown bigshot in old San Francisco, whose iron fist keeps progress on the march.  His heart is softened one day by the sight of cultured Miriam Hopkins who comes to work in his casino.  Miriam’s eye, however, is caught by a poetry-loving lumberjack played by Joel McCrea at his awe-shucksy best.