The Beast of the City (1932)

Very Cool!!!

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Warner Archive offers a DVD of The Beast of the City (1932), in which Walter Huston plays a career cop who tries to clean up the city, despite determined opposition from politicians, the press, the public, his superiors - and even his brother (Wallace Ford) who has made an attachment with a gangster's moll (Jean Harlow). A dark and gritty film noir (which tends to go overboard in its concluding stages), the film was financed for Metro by William Randolph Hearst as an answer to Little Caesar. Both Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg were horrified by the finished film and attempted to withhold it from release. They kept it on the shelf for a year and then instructed salesmen to make little attempt to book it into theaters. The MGM brass hoped the movie would show a loss (which it did) and thus discourage moneybags Hearst from further forays into the grim and totally alien world of film noir.

This story of a tough cop turned chief of police is an uneven mix of entertaining and very clunky moments. Walter Huston did a lot of very good work in his career, but here, as the 'hero' (almost an anti-hero), he's pretty flat and one note. It's interesting in theory to see a cop in a film this old who's bends the law to get 'justice', but the lack of electricity in the writing and the performance make a number of his scenes a bit of a chore to sit through. Also, the much discussed climatic gunfight, while impressively violent for the day, is also pretty silly on anything but a symbolic level. I find it hard to believe a real gunfight in the 1930s (or ANY time) could have looked anything like this. On the plus side, Jean Harlow is a lot of pre-code fun in a supporting role as a gun moll, seducing the chief's cop brother in an extended scene that's both sexy and funny. When Wallace Ford as the brother asks her 'you don't like to be hurt, do you' after he accidentally grabs her too hard, she comes back with "I don't know, it can be fun if it's done in the right spirit", said with a gleam in her eye hot enough to melt an ice cube at the north pole. There's also some very interesting and evocative photography sprinkled through the film. Moving the huge blimped cameras was never easy in these early sound films, but there are some nice tracking shots here, along with good use of shadows. That said, there are many better films from this era than MGM's awkward attempt to get into Warner's patented cops and robbers territory, but with a almost proto-fascist, slant. But if you're interested in pre-code films, and the subject matter, you could also do worse for a piece of film and period history.

What could I tell more than the other users about that real gem from the thirties? They have already told everything. I just specify that this features reminds me Abel Ferrarra's masterpiece: " King of New York". The tale of a bunch of hard boiled cops, friends as well in the force as outside their job, a real family, who decide to wipe a gang of unassailable hoods out, by their own way. The hard way. Apply their own justice. Except that in the Ferrarra's film, the gangsters are shown with a little sympathy; Christopher Walken is a "good" gangster who want to sell drug in order to build a hospital for the homeless, something like that...In Ferrarra's film, there is no real bad guy or good guy. The audience feels sympathy for both sides: cops and hoods.In both films you find a story of a ruthless face to face between two groups. Tll their total extermination. Fierce stories but exciting. I love that...

The blond bomb shell, Jean Harlow,(Daisy Stevens),"Reckless",'35 gave an outstanding performance and some of her outfits showed off all the wonderful things males love in a woman during the 1930's and still DO ! Walter Houston,(Capt. Jim Fitzpatrick),"The Great Sinner",'49, played a rough and tough Irish Captain who did not mess around with the mob and especially Jean Hersholt, who really did not fit very well in this role. Jean Hersholt played very few roles as the bad guy during the 1920's and 30's and was a good actor in the radio days. J. Carrol Naish,(Pietro Cholo),"The Beast With Five Fingers",'46, was very young and gave a great supporting role on his way to a fantastic career on the Silver Screen. The ending of this film is great and I thought it was very well directed and produced.