Touches You

The greatest movie ever made..!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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.

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.

I COVER THE WATERFRONT (United Artists, 1933), directed by James Cruze, based on "the unique and personal experiences of a newspaper reporter covering a Pacific waterfront" by Max Miller, is an interesting yet old-fashioned tale made plausible thanks to its interesting cast, namely Claudette Colbert, on an assignment away from her home studio of Paramount, in an against-type performance as a tough waterfront girl, with screen veteran Ernest Torrence as her rugged fisherman father. While Colbert's name heads the cast during the introductory title, it's Ben Lyon, in one of his finer screen roles at this point, whose name comes first during its second cast introduction (through newspaper clippings) and closing casting credits, and with good reason, too, because the plot revolves around his character suggested on Max Miller, while Torrence, who died before the film's release, being the most interesting of the two leads mainly because the way he acquires himself as both brutal and likable.In a story set against the San Diego waterfront, H. Joseph Miller (Ben Lyon), an investigative reporter, takes up residence in the surrounding area while doing a series of "I Cover the Waterfront" articles for his newspaper. He is determined to get enough evidence on Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence), whom he suspects is the leader of a smuggling racket. After meeting a girl named Julie (Claudette Colbert), who attracts his attention as well as a nosy busybody (Lillian Harmer) using a peril-scope, by taking her nightly ocean swim without anything on, Miller becomes interested in her, especially after learning she's Kirk's daughter. As gathering enough information about Kirk without her realizing his intentions, Miller comes close to making his catch at the risk of losing his bait.An interesting mix of romance, comedy and drama with risqué dialog added in, I COVER THE WATERFRONT has its share of intense scenes, including Eli Kirk giving orders for his crew to take his smuggled Chinaman, with hands tied behind his back, to be covered up and feet heavily chained so to have him dumped into the ocean and dispose of so not to have the evidence found on board his ship by Coast Guard Randall (Wilfred Lucas) and reporter Miller; the drowned Chinaman fished out of the ocean by Old Chris (Harry Beresford) and Miller taking the body of the "chink" as evidence and placing it on the desk of John Phelps (Purnell B. Pratt), his city editor; Ortegus (Maurice Black), one of Kirk's crew members who, during an attempt to capture a large shark, falling into the ocean and getting a shark attack; and Miller's solving the riddle of "Jonah and the Whale" by discovering Kirk's smuggling method of rum and Chinese immigrants by having them sewn into the bellies of huge dead sharks, and much more. Talk about having an upset stomach.For some amusements, there's Hobart Cavanaugh playing McCoy, Miller's sidekick reporter, with his several attempts to pick up some "nice girls" at Mother Morgan's (Claudia Coleman) Boarding House. While at the same establishment, there's Julie having a confrontation with one of the "ladies of the evening" who had taken her drunken father's money, and demanding for its return. There's even some dark humor set at a Santa Madre Torture Ship museum where Miller demonstrates some torture devises to Julie by having her trapped in one and helpless to his kisses.Not quite as powerful as other waterfront stories: ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) or EDGE OF THE CITY (1957), for example, I COVER THE WATERFRONT shows how raw it could be. Aside from that, it does have its share of great scenes that build up suspense, thanks to its writing staff, leading players and some location scenery. While it's commendable for Colbert to try something different by playing stronger characters, her role as the tough waterfront girl, that have been better suited to the likes of a Jean Harlow or Carole Lombard for example, doesn't come off as hard as it should. Having Colbert as its leading lady is one of the reasons for viewing this one today.Sad to say the prints that have been in circulation since the late 1980s are from a reissue containing different opening score and ten minutes clipped from its original 72 minutes. The reissue even eliminates Torrence's name from the cast altogether as well as the closing cast listing and exit music. While Bob Dorian, former host of American Movie Classics, claimed that AMC never cuts its movies, it did acquire this edited version during its March 1989 presentation. While it's hard to acquire a more concise print to the 1933 original copy these days, a close to complete version containing both the original "I Cover the Waterfront" theme and Torrence's name in the cast, would have to be processed by an old 1980s video Film Classics in clam shell distribution from Kartes Communications, otherwise film enthusiasts might have to wait and hope for a cable channel such as Turner Classic Movies to restore and present a more accurate print to the 1933 original with exit music. (****)

The presence of luminous Claudette Colbert lifts this standard and somewhat dreary effort to an entirely different level. Her shocking entrance has her buck-naked after skinny-dipping in the ocean, where Ben Lyon holds her bathing suit hostage as Claudette hides behind a boulder. She demands to know how he found her in this remote beach. He tells her that a neighbor with a telescope objected to her nudity. "It must have been a woman," replies Claudette. "Yes," answers Lyon, "no man would object." Obviously, Claudette Colbert appears at the pinnacle of her legendary beauty, with her distinctive wide cheekbones complemented by her enormous eyes. Her wardrobe here is cheap yet sexy, often in tight sweaters, and her slim form cuts a glorious figure across the screen. She's cute in the best sense, never self-conscious or cloying, and it's easy to see why she'd take the nation by storm the following year in "It Happened One Night" and "Cleopatra." It's a joy to even watch her make toast in an adorable bit of business when she catchs an errant glob of jelly from dropping onto the table. One of the sweetest ad-libs I've ever noticed, done with humor and style.The movie itself offers other enjoyments too. Like the gnarled Ernest Torrance as Claudette's sea-salty father, who smuggles illegal Chinese immigrants into port -- sometimes inside the bellies of sharks! Naturalistic undertones abound when the viewer goes aboard this captain's ship, where it's an unfortunate incident when a Chinese man is chained and thrown overboard when the Coast Guard is spotted nearby. "He knew he was takin' a risk," is how the Captain justifies his actions.All-in-all a worthwhile effort, this movie has much to recommend it, although it is somewhat marred by annoying Ben Lyon as the lead. If another actor had essayed that role, perhaps Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy, the entire movie could have been lifted to greatness.