La grande ville

A battle is heating up between different taxi factions in the big city. The Comet Taxi company owner John C. Andrews is reconsidering the hiring of thugs in his competition against the independents. Joe Benton (Spencer Tracy) is one of those independents and married to immigrant Anna (Luise Rainer). Anna announces that she's pregnant. She sends her brother to deliver a raincoat to the Comet garage. The thugs had planned a frame up for him. They shoot the brother after they bomb the garage to start a taxi war. Anna won't be a citizen for another six weeks and the authority decides to deport her to alleviate the public pressure.

The movie has two great Hollywood legends in Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer. It starts like a rom-com and Spencer's charms really sell that. They're a great on-screen couple. Luise has an exotic beauty. The plot turns into a bit of a gangster thriller. There isn't much tension. It becomes a melodrama. It needs more action. Spencer wrongly continues his smiling charms which belies the dire straits of the situation. It's not a highlight for either of these legends but their star power cannot be denied.

New York City cabdriver Spencer Tracy (as Joe Benton) picks up dewy-eyed Luise Rainer (as Anna Roya) on the street one evening and makes amorous advances. A policeman stops Mr. Tracy's aggressive moves, but Ms. Rainer jumps into his arms. As it turns out, the co-stars are happily married and enjoy role-playing. The real problem is with "independent" driver Tracy and a big taxicab company. A taxi war is going on and Ms. Rainer, a Russian immigrant, becomes a murder suspect. Future "My Three Sons" TV series favorite uncle William Demarest (as Beecher) stands out as the lead bad-guy. Near the end, Jack Dempsey and several sports figures appear...

"Big City" opens like a comedy, turns into a hard-boiled crime drama, then tries to merge events in a closing stolen by athletic fighter and manic speedster Eddie Quillan (as Mike Edwards). The film is a vehicle for Rainer, elevated to MGM stardom as studio chief Louis B. Mayer sought another Greta Garbo. More like Garbo's Russian ballerina from "Grand Hotel" than Tracy's working-class wife, Rainer recalls the Swedish superstar most in her telephone and ice cream cone scenes. The two-time "Oscar" winner has an interesting courtroom outburst and emotes unmercifully during her saddest scenes. Director Frank Borzage moves it along and captures some atmosphere.

***** Big City (9/3/37) Frank Borzage ~ Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy, William Demarest, Eddie Quillan

Big City (1937)

*** (out of 4)

Incredibly off the wall and insane drama from MGM has an independent taxi service battling with a union led taxi service. When the union side has their placed bombed one of the indie guys (Spencer Tracy) has his wife (Luise Rainer) suspected and shipped out of the country. This film is all over the map that you could put it in any genre including a romantic comedy, a screwball comedy and an action film. Tracy and Rainer deliver very good performances and their chemistry together is right on the mark. They make for a very romantic couple and Tracy's big crying scene is incredibly touching. It's also great seeing NYC back in the day plus there's a scene inside Jack Dempsey's restaurant, which leads to a street fight with Dempsey himself plus other famous athletes including Jim Thorpe, Man Mountain Dean and various others.

... declares Chevy Chase in a fake commercial in the first season of Saturday Night Live about some strange product that could be one of several things that nobody can identify. That sentiment applies to this film too. With Spencer Tracy and Luise Ranier in the lead as a cab driver husband and his foreign born and raised wife and the MGM trademark you'd be expecting a melodrama, but when it comes to director Frank Borzage, expect the unexpected.

The overall theme has to do with the war between a large cab company - Comet Cab - and the independent cab drivers in New York City. It's part tragedy in the willingness of city officials to deport an innocent alien girl (Ranier as Anna) without any real due process in order to avoid a controversy, part drama in the war between the cabbies and the conspiracy to hide Anna from the cops until six weeks expires and she becomes an American citizen, and part screwball comedy with a funny but rather pointless street brawl between all of the cabbies with some popular sports figures of the day (Jack Dempsey, Jim Thorpe, Bull Montana, Jack Jeffries and more) thrown into the fight for good measure as well as the chief of police, the district attorney and the mayor getting into the act. Actually the part about hiding Anna is partially played for laughs too, with the joke being on the hapless police always running in circles.

Then there's the bad guy, the muscle for Comet Cab Company who is willing to murder to keep his protection racket rolling who is played by - William Demarest??? Usually the comic relief or a harmless yet crusty fellow, you just know Borzage is playing the drama part of this tongue in cheek with this particular piece of casting. When Uncle Charlie of "My Three Sons" says "I'll rub you out if you talk" it's just hard to be too terribly afraid. All we need is baddie Barton McLane as a hairdresser to make the upside down casting and strange plot roadmap of this film complete.

One of the things Borzage did best was depict camaraderie and heroism, and here you see that in the independent cabbies and their wives who are willing to risk jail to keep Anna hidden from the police, and in Anna when she realizes that her presence among them is causing so much hardship for them.

Don't think I don't like this one - I do. Just sit back and enjoy whatever course of events you are presented and don't try to pigeon hole it or analyze it too much. From the first frame with cabbie Joe Benton attempting to "pick up" his own wife, to the end credits with the normally dignified MGM insignia that instead sports a hand-drawn lion's backside aimed at the audience, I've never seen anything quite like this from the movie factory era of MGM.

Luise Rainer and Spencer Tracy are an affectionate couple in "Big City," a small film from MGM, which is surprising, since it has two big stars in it. The happy world of Joe and Anna is torn apart when her brother is killed as a result of a war between the independent cabbies in New York and a large cab company. Anna is blamed and plans are made to deport her.

Rainer and Tracy make a sweet couple; one really believes they're in love. Tracy is wonderful. Rainer is beautiful with soulful eyes, and of course, she gets another telephone call as in "Hello, Flo" in "The Great Ziegfeld." Rainer takes a lot of heat for winning two Oscars in a row and basically disappearing soon after, as if this was her fault. She was, and still is, a strong-willed woman who came up against Louis B. End of story. He's long dead and she's still alive as of this writing, at the age of 96, and made a film in 2003. So take that, Louis.

This film was made at a time when you weren't supposed to see a woman's pregnancy, and though Anna is pregnant in the story, in fact, far enough along to be ready to give birth, from the look of her, the baby should have weighed half an ounce.

The end of the film is a free-for-all featuring some of the great sports figures of the day, listed in the cast, including Jim Thorpe, Maxie Rosenbloom, and Jack Dempsey. Look for Ruth Hussey in a small part as the mayor's secretary.