The Hard Guy

A very young Spencer Tracy plays the eponymous guy in this Depression-era short that starts out as a gritty slice of realism and, due to a surprise and funny ending, ends as a comedy. This kind of thing served merely as a time filler, so there's no point in reviewing it for its artistry or film techniques. But it is very interesting from a historical standpoint. Simply knowing that this short film played in mainstream movie houses, and addressed the Depression head on, shows how different a world we live in today, when mass entertainment seeks to do anything but make its audiences think about current events. And there's a chilling moment when Tracy says that the war they're currently waging (the Depression) makes the war they just lived through (WWI) seem like a cake walk---this wouldn't have been chilling at the time, but from today's vantage point, knowing WWII was just around the corner, it gives this little nothing of a film a prophetic quality.

My first thought when I saw it was that this short is something you would never see now. A short film with a happy ending seems to be something unattainable in this generation. Anyway that being said it's neither a great nor a bad short. A man and his wife are trying to feed and provide for their child. The man goes out, hoping to find a job, but first grabs his revolver. His wife find the revolver in the coat and is scared. He goes out with the gun and returns with a haul. His wife assumes that he stole the things after hearing a commotion downstairs with a police officer chasing after. Finally he tells her he sold the gun. Spencer Tracy is young and an okay actor. In my opinion just as he always was. If you want to see an entertaining movie with Spencer Tracy, try "Desk Set." It is apolitical and is a pretty cute comedy involving a mad computer and a coupl'a risqué librarians.

Besides the chance to see a very young-looking Spencer Tracy, this short feature is worth seeing for its fairly clever story, despite the rather routine production quality. It's the kind of feature that used to be quite common, taking one plot idea and telling a simple story with, in this case, a twist at the end.

Tracy plays a World War I veteran who is down on his luck due to the depression. His endless, fruitless search for employment would surely have rung true with its original audiences, and while Tracy's style is not yet very polished, he is believable in portraying his character's rising desperation. This is increased by his wife's own fear and anxiety, and both are channeled so as to guide the viewer's expectations and set up the finale.

The climactic scene is really the whole reason for the movie, and it works rather well. With that and a situation that was all too familiar at the time, it's a relatively interesting miniature that comes off effectively enough, despite not having much more than that working for it.

Hard Man, The (1930)

*** (out of 4)

Spencer Tracy, in his third film, plays a Depression-era father who is tired of seeing his young daughter go without. After reading about a robbery in the newspaper, the desperate father goes out with a gun in his hand leaving his wife to fear the worst. This Vitaphone short runs just six-minutes but fans of Tracy will certainly want to see his early performance here. As far as the film goes there's really nothing too special here as it appears this film was made just to see what type of performances the actors could give. As far as Tracy goes I really enjoyed his work here because it contains that intensity that we'd come to expect from the actor and I found it to be rather impressive. The story itself is nothing too special but I thought it was interesting to see the Depression tale as many watching this film were probably feeling the same way Tracy's character does.

If you haven't seen this yet, don't read the plot summary. It starts off as a grim, naturalistic story of a starving urban family and the father's struggle to do something to make a change. How surprising to see Spencer Tracy so young and unformed as an actor! I won't give away the surprise ending because, frankly, without the surprise ending the short has little to offer. In only six minutes or so, it has no time to go into depth. Every time I see one of these early 1930's depression-era films that treat the underdog working man with such sympathy, I wonder what has changed so much in our society. Can you imagine any major studio project--other than a foreign import--set in the present time that sides with a working-class character who robs and pulls guns on his victims? Yes, it's another era, isn't it? That's not exactly what happens here, but this short plays on our expectation that that is what WILL happen. An interesting curio. Because TCM does not list shorts on its schedule, I just happened to be setting my TV to tape something on TCM later in the day when I caught the "one reel wonders" intro, and thought I'd hang around to see what it was. And after this, TCM ran an obscure 1930 interview with D.W. Griffith as filler! Great stuff, but is there any way we could find out about them IN ADVANCE, TCM???