Down in old San Francisco, round about Gold Rush time, there's a pleasure district so notorious that the locals have nicknamed it 'the barbary coast'. A home to gamblers, criminals and worse, it's not the sort of place you'd expect to find a well-brought up lady like Mary Rutledge (Hopkins). She's breezed into town to meet her fiancé and is upset to learn that he's been murdered over a gambling dispute.
Since she only loved him for his fortune, however, she soon recovers and decides to stay in the neighbourhood, taking a position with crooked casino owner Luis Chamalis (Robinson); her job is to lure unsuspecting gold miners to the rigged roulette wheels and deprive them of their new-found fortunes. But when she meets gallant prospector James Carmichael (McCrea), she discovers that she's a lot less hard-boiled than she thought.
The story of a lawless frontier town getting cleaned up is a familiar one but it's seldom been told better than here. In part, this is because the filmmakers realise how much fun the Coast is before the moralists march in: while the recreation might not be historically accurate – Hollywood's newly inaugurated censors saw to that – it's still a wonderfully wicked environment. Robinson has a ball hamming it up as the bad guy, even if his outfit – ruffled shirt, hoop earring and what looks suspiciously like lipstick – does make him look as though he's auditioning to join Spandau Ballet.
This being a Howard Hawks film, of course, there are certain formalities that need to be observed. Sure enough, McCrea's hero is tall and laconic, Hopkins' dame is sassy and sexy, their badinage is fast and feisty. There's even a role for Hawks' favourite Walter Brennan, the first of the grizzled old coots he would essay for the director.
It scarcely needs to be said that Hawks was one of the very greatest of directors. It's a measure of his gifts that this glorious romp isn't generally reckoned amongst his masterpieces; it would be a highlight in anyone else's career, a wonderful example of Hollywood at its best.
Capturing some of the anything-goes atmosphere of San Francisco at the time of the Gold Rush, this rip-roaring tale of a love triangle and greed sees Edward G. Robinson play the owner of a saloon bar in the red light district of the city. The climax is a thrilling chase through the goldfields as Robinson goes after Joel McCrea and Miriam Hopkins.
Narrow Margin (Fleischer, 1952)
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Barbary Coast
