poj-man I popped this in for my 88 year old Mom to watch to stop her from dawdling. It is hard to find anything that will grab her interest. Momma was rapt and I was quite surprised.The story is also well written for the times. The dialog is not so stock as is wont for films of the time.Claudette Colbert absolutely shines in this pre-code picture. Her nude swimming and bondage scenes are spectacular for 1933. She also is a believable 1930's female.The rest of the cast is not bad. Ernest Torrance is a commendable lovable scoundrel.If you can appreciate an early cinema 1930's film you will enjoy this movie! I know I enjoyed it!

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Stuck in a dead end job covering the San Diego waterfront newspaper reporter Joe Miller, Ben Lyon, would want nothing better then leave that boring and no news worthy hick town for a place like Chicago or New York were the real action is.Joe does have one news story that he feels would break the ice, in getting him a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, and that has to do with the suspected smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants into the US by old salt and gin & rummy drinking Eli Kirk, Ernest Torrence. What stunned me about Kirk's smuggling operations is that not only is he, in every scene he's in, far too drunk to do anything especially operate a boat on the high seas but the Chinese he's smuggling end up very very dead! That's by Kirk stuffing them, alive, inside the stomachs of 20 or more foot long sharks where they end up either suffocating or drowning!It's only by chance that Joe runs into the very sexy Julie, Claudette Colbert, on the beach one evening skinny-dipping in the Pacific Ocean. As it turned out Julie just happens to be Old Man Eli Kirks' daughter! Getting romantically involved with the somewhat naive Julie in what his plans really are, to get the goods on her old man, Joe instead falls helplessly in love with her. This makes it very difficult for Joe to have Julie's father arrested by informing the US Customs Agents about his illegal activities but, as duty calls, he does it anyway. The way Joe, through circumstances beyond his control, does it not only ends up with Eli not only saving his life but having his daughter Julie, who at first dumped him, not only fall in love with Joe but in the end marry him!The movie, based on the 1932 best selling book by Max Miller, really doesn't make that much sense in explaining the bizarre round-robin relationship between on and off lovers Joe and Julie and the criminally minded, he's in fact responsible for at least two murders, and constantly drunk Eli Kirk. Were also given a bit of comedy relief by having Joe's friend the mooching and always drunk, like Eli, One Punch McCoy, Hobart Cavanaugh, who it would take only one punch, or slap, to flatten him.P.S There's a number of oddities in "I Cover the Waterfront" in that it was one of the last films not restricted by the Hollywood Hayes Commission on morality in films where it was implied, not shown thanks heavens, Julie or actress Claudette Colbert actually swimming nude on film. There's also the oddity of one of the movie's top stars Ernest Torrence never living long enough to see himself in it by dying at the age of 54, on May 15, 1933, just days before the film was to be released to the movie going public. And by far the biggest oddity of all about the film is that the composer of its haunting and hypnotic them song, also called "I Cover the Waterfront", Johnny Green was for some reason or another excluded from the movie's-opening as well as closing- credits!

robert-temple-1 This film was excellently directed by James Cruze, best known for 'The Great Gabbo' (1929) with Erich von Stroheim, and the Will Rogers vehicle, 'Mr. Skitch' (1933). Cruze died rather young, and has never been properly appreciated. Here he has made a gritty and realistic drama of the California waterfront with lots of harrowing location footage shot at sea showing the dangers of shark fishing. Apparently, great white sharks were hunted by harpoon from small rowboats, and here we see just how wrong this can go. The story is all about Claudette Colbert, here as radiant as ever she was, despite the fact that all the characters in the film including herself are morally ambivalent at best. Her father is a ruthless people smuggler who does not hesitate to throw a Chinese illegal immigrant overboard to save himself from discovery by the Coast Guard, but despite being this sort of character, he is powerfully played by character actor Ernest Torrence as someone entitled to our sympathy, and Claudette goes on loving him despite his crimes, which surely must have left some touches of mildew on her supposedly stainless character? As for her love interest, the dogged newspaper reporter played by Ben Lyon, who is sick of the waterfront and wants to go back to the sanity of Vermont, his own character flaws are wide enough to drive a rather large fishing boat through. All of these iniquities are glossed over, as we are encouraged to root for the romance of this couple, and we very quickly drown in the deep pools of Claudette's soulful eyes (which, by the way, has anybody ever noticed, are too far apart). This is absolutely not a sugary Hollywood drama. Its moral ambiguity possibly makes it all the more interesting.

Snow Leopard Although some aspects of the film don't quite work, "I Cover the Waterfront" is a pretty good atmospheric drama with some good moments. The setting works very well for a story of suspense and crime, and the good story mostly makes up for the less impressive elements of the movie.Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is reporter assigned to find interesting stories along the waterfront. His obsession is to prove that ship captain Eli Kirk is involved in a smuggling operation with an occasional murder thrown in. When Miller has a chance meeting with Kirk's charming daughter Julie (Claudette Colbert), he seizes the opportunity to get information about her father. He quickly becomes enamored of Julie, and find himself with conflicting loyalties. Some of the story that follows is predictable, but there are some moments of tension and some good scenes.The waterfront setting is done nicely, and it makes a good background to the events in the plot. It also includes an exciting and realistic shark-fishing scene. On the other hand, there are some features that are less effective or even a bit dated: for example, the very callous attitudes of all of the characters towards Chinese immigrants, and Miller's irritating sidekick, who is supposed to provide comic relief by his habitual drunkenness, but who is really just an annoyance that contributes nothing whatsoever to the plot.Overall, this is an interesting film despite a few flaws, and it is worth watching for anyone who likes films of the era.