Overrated and overhyped

hyped garbage

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Nothing much new about the romantic stuff. Spencer Tracy takes Loretta Young into his shack, neither of them having anything resembling other resources. Tracy finds an older blond who is willing to keep him in food and clothes, but then Loretta Young has to go and spring it on Tracy that she's preggers. It puts Tracy in a quandary. He likes to think of himself as a free man, a drifter who rides the rails at will. He tries to pull off a robbery after marrying Young, with the intention of leaving the boodle with her and taking off on his own. But they are in love and he winds up taking her with him. Last scene: the married pair lying together on the straw of an empty box car rattling through the night.It sounded so dull at first that I thought for a moment box cars were forming on my retina. However, the film is saved by its ethnographic perspective and by the earnest performances. You just have to swallow the love story which, by the way, isn't entirely boring.The movie was released in 1933, meaning it was shot in 1932 and written a bit earlier. That was pre-code and in the depths of the Great Depression. (If it weren't pre-code, you wouldn't have Loretta Young getting pregnant and planning to have a bastard child.) But what a glimpse of life at the bottom when no one had any work. Tracy's Hooverville shack somewhere in New York City is made out of garbage. Cardboard, corrugated iron, no stove, discarded automobile doors, and other junk, a divine assembly of bricolage. And, boy, does Loretta Young dress it up and turn it into a home. Women are always doing things like that. They just can't leave a man alone to live like a billy goat. Anyway, it illustrates some of the stresses associated with utter poverty.The performances are fine too. Many actors seemed to follow a similar trajectory -- small parts in clumsy early movies (Bogart, Cary Grant) -- but Tracy came straight from Broadway and brought with him the persona that would last him throughout his career. He was tough, restrained, practical. Loretta Young -- I never realized how many movies she made in the 30s when she was young. She began at the age of 15 with a major part in one of Lon Chaney's silents. She's powerful pretty in an innocent and slightly chubby way. She can fix up the hovel I live in any time.

Wow. Watching this film today, you can't help but be appalled by the writing of this film. Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young play a couple who, in modern times, might be featured on "The Jerry Springer Show"--as they have a sick and abusive relationship...and inexplicably, the writers appear to be endorsing it! The film begins with a hungry and homeless Loretta being shown the ropes by the poor but very resourceful Spencer Tracy. He shows her how by conniving you can do very well with little money and takes her home to his shack to stay. It's never clear whether or not they marry--and considering it's a Pre-Code film, you can assume they aren't even though they are cohabiting. Their relationship is very strange...and rather sick. While you can see that Tracy cares about her by his actions, he is verbally abusive and a total jerk---and Young comes running back for more like some sort of dog. He calls her "skinny" or "ugly" and these are, in a sick way, his way of using endearments! Later, when he starts fooling around with another woman (Glenda Farrell), she tells her friend that if that's what he wants, it's okay with her!!! It sure smacks of a sado-masochistic relationship and you can't help but feel a bit horrified. Sure, he doesn't hit her but the relationship is very abusive. To show how sick it is, when Young gets pregnant, she tells him "...it's your baby and it's mine, but you don't need to worry, I'll take all the blame for it"!! Yikes! Doesn't this all seem a bit like looking through a peephole into a sick and dysfunctional home?! Later, in a case of art imitating life, Tracy proves what sort of man he is and disappears. After all, he can't be burdened with a baby--even if it's his. But, he changes his mind and decides to return home. Wow...that's bit of him! And, when he returns, he's nasty and acts like IF he stays, he isn't obligated to care for the kid!! And, she tells him he's "a free man...free as a bird"! Wow, I was almost in tears at this tender moment...NOT! Soon, this crazy pair are married...and, naturally, Young is depressed because he seems to be staying as long as it suits him--not because of any love or sense of responsibility. So how can you salvage anything with this sort of sick characters? What would you do? Well, as for the writers, they have Tracy soon commit a robbery to help pay for the brat! The romantic aspects of the film are underwhelming to say the least! During the robbery, Tracy behaves like a chump--doing almost nothing to take precautions not to get caught--like he was secretly hoping to get sent to prison. And, to show what sort of nice guy he is, the guy he tries to rob is one of his best friends.While there's more to the film, the bottom line is that Tracy is a jerk and Young is an idiot in the film. Despite both being very good actors, there's absolutely no way they could make anything of this crap the writers produced. Nice music, nice sets, good acting...and a script that is 100% poo. How the film is currently rated 7.4 is beyond me and I wonder how anyone can ignore the pure awfulness of the characters. A horrible misfire that somehow didn't destroy the careers of those involved.Oh, and if you wonder if Loretta EVER gets a backbone in this film or plays a person who is the least bit strong, the answer is NO! By the end, she's learned nothing and hasn't changed one whit for the better.They sure don't make films like they used to...and in this case...thank God!

Man's Castle (1933) *** (out of 4) A rather bizarre love story from Borzage set during the Depression-era as two different people are brought together through being poor. Spencer Tracy plays a hot tempered man who has the charm to live a good life but instead plays it day to day just making what he has to. He takes in a poor woman (Loretta Young) and they hit it off well even though he mistreats her and she might want something out of him that he'd never be able to give. If the term love story makes you want to pass this film up then you might want to think again because this isn't the tear jerker that would have women lining up buying tickets. Instead, this is a pretty mean spirited pre-code that has all sorts of stuff from premarital sex to abused women to suffering because of being poor and even a brief mention of an abortion. Did I mention that Tracy and Young go skinny dipping early in the movie? At the heart of the film is a love story but we've got so much other stuff going on that you might lose site of that. For starters, Tracy's character is one of the biggest S.O.B's you'll likely see in a film from this era. He's incredibly mean and often takes it out on Young who doesn't mind getting insulted or being left behind when he's out with other women. I think a lot of people are going to be turned off because of how mean he is but I guess this is a part of the "moral" in the film. Tracy delivers another fine performance and I think the reason I personally didn't hate his character more is because of how good the actor was. He certainly pulls off the meanness without any trouble but at the same time you can just look at him and know there's something under that toughness. Young, perhaps my favorite actress, also delivers another winning performance. She's very believable in the abused woman role even though you want to ask her why she's with the jerk. The film has a message about a lot of issues and this is another reason why it remains rather fresh today especially since we're going through another hard time with people without jobs and unable to eat. The speech Tracy's character gives to a restaurant early on is something that would probably get a standing ovation today.

Man's Castle is set in one of those jerry built settlements on vacant land and parks that during these times were called 'Hoovervilles' named after our unfortunate 31st president who got stuck with The Great Depression occurring in his administration. The proposition of this film is that a man's home is still his castle even when it's just a shack in a Hooverville.Spencer Tracy has such a shack and truth be told this guy even in good times would not be working all that much. But in a part very typical for Tracy before he was cast as a priest in San Francisco, the start of a slew of classic roles, he's playing a tough good natured mug who takes in Loretta Young.One of the things about Man's Castle is that it shows the effects of the Depression on women as well as men. Women had some additional strains put on them, if men had trouble finding work, women had it twice as hard. And they were sexually harassed and some resorted to prostitution just for a square meal. Spence takes Loretta Young in who's facing those kind of problems and makes no demands on her in his castle. Pretty soon though they're in love, though Tracy is not the kind to settle down.The love scenes had some extra zing to them because Tracy and Young were having a torrid affair during the shooting of Man's Castle. And both were Catholic and married and in those days that was an insuperable barrier to marriage. Both Tracy and Young took the Catholic faith quite seriously.Also in the cast are Walter Connolly as a kind of father figure for the whole camp, Marjorie Rambeau who's been through all the pitfalls Young might encounter and tries to steer her clear and Arthur Hohl, a really loathsome creep who has his eye on Young as well. Hohl brings the plot of Man's Castle to its climax through his scheming. Man's Castle is grim look at the Great Depression, not the usual movie escapist fare for those trying to avoid that kind of reality in their entertainment.