Vicino alle stelle

As other reviewers have noted, this is an unjustly neglected Depression-era film. Directed by Frank Borzage (two Oscars) and written by Jo Swerling (Leave Her to Heaven, The Westerner, Lifeboat, etc.), it is a tough-minded, well-structured and -realized move about denizens of a New York City shantytown. They're grifters, beggars, and women forced into prostitution, but they're a community of people both good and bad, with loyalties as complex as any group's.

Perhaps primary among this movie's many admirable qualities is the contrast between Spencer Tracy's character, Bill, and Loretta Young's Trina. He tough-talking, physically aggressive, and evidently fearless-- but Bill is not the character who gives this film its steely sense of survival. While he blusters, Trina actually hangs tough (if that term can be applied to a character so ladylike). Her devotion to him is obvious, and complete. When she becomes pregnant, she says she will raise it herself if he wants to leave. Such is the dignity of Loretta Young's performance (at age 20) as a very simple, even simple-minded character, that she seems neither weak or dependent, but rather a woman who recognizes happiness when she finds it, and love, and who has learned the hard way that it's worth holding on to because it doesn't come around often, and what's rare is precious.

I generally find Loretta Young hard to take, too concerned with her looks and too ladylike in all the wrong ways. But in this lyrical Frank Borzage romance, and even though she's playing a low-self-esteem patsy who puts up with entirely too much bullying from paramour Spencer Tracy, she's direct and honest and irresistible. It's an odd little movie, played mostly in a one-room shack in a Hooverville, unusually up-front about the Depression yet romantic and idealized. Tracy, playing a blustery, hard-to-take "regular guy" who would be an awful chauvinist and bully by today's standards, softens his character's hard edge and almost makes him appealing. There's good supporting work from Marjorie Rambeau and Glenda Farrell (who never got as far as she should have), and Jo Swerling's screenplay is modest and efficient. But the real heroes are Borzage, who always liked to dramatize true love in lyrical close-up, and Young. You sort of want to slap her and tell her character to wise up, she's too good for this guy, but she's so dewy and persuasive, you contentedly watch their story play out to a satisfying conclusion.

Unfortunately, this film has long been unavailable (as other posters have noted), but this is one of the essential dramas of the Great Depression, a lyrical and touching drama of love set in a shanty-town. It features performances by Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young that are just about the finest of their careers, and it's a surpassing example of how the director, Frank Borzage, was able to create an almost fairy-tale aura around elements of poverty, crime, and horrendous social inequity, which just proves that how truly romantic and spiritual his talents were. This film shows how love survives amidst squalor and desperate need, and it is totally life-affirming. This is a real masterpiece of the period, and is a movie that deserves to be more widely known.

It's a shame this movie is so hard to get your hands on in the US. I found it through a rare video dealer, and it was certainly worth it. This is, without a doubt, the best film made during the pre-code era, and the finest film of the 1930s. Masterful director Frank Borzage made wonderful films about the Depression, and with MAN'S CASTLE he created a fairy tale amidst the hardships of the era.

Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy have a wonderful chemistry between them, and they help make this movie a wonderful romance. Young's Trina is sweet and hopeful, while Tracy's Bill is gruff and closed-off. The dynamic between the character creates one of the most difficult, but in the end rewarding relationships on film.

MAN'S CASTLE is the most soft-focus pre-code film I've seen. Borzage uses the hazy and dreamy technique to turn the squatter's village where Bill and Trina live into a palace. The hardships of the Depression are never ignored, in fact they're integral to the film. But as Borzage crafts the film as a soft focus fairy tale, the love between the characters makes the situation seem less harsh. It makes the film warm and affectionate.

MAN'S CASTLE is the crowning achievement of the pre-code era. If only more people could see it.

Bill (Spencer Tracy) and Trina (Loretta Young) meet on a park bench during the depth of the Great Depression where Trina admits she has not eaten in two days - she is homeless and jobless like so many others. Bill is dressed in a tuxedo, she thinks he is rich. He invites her to eat a sumptuous meal at a fine restaurant. But it turns out he is broke and manages to bluster and threaten his - and her - way out of trouble with the restaurant. They very shortly end up lovers, living together in a shack in a homeless encampment of other forgotten men and women. Lots of complications that you have probably seen in other precode films ensue.

This movie was a lot like other Borzage films, in particular the director seemed like he was trying for a redo of the earthbound parts of Lilliom to some extent with traces of Seventh Heaven - A poor, lonely girl falls head over heels for a swaggering lay about who seems, from the outside, to use and mistreat her and have no appreciation for her. But her love sees past his cloddish behavior and fulfills her so completely that, for her, the domestic life she makes with him is bliss.

The casting is what makes the difference in this film. As opposed to Lilliom's Charles Farrell, Spencer Tracy is believable as someone who could throw a punch and knock somebody out and never give full throated - or even half throated - praise to Young's character, yet there is tenderness under that rough and seemingly uncaring exterior. Likewise, when Young moons after Tracy, the screen lights up like Times Square. That makes all the difference in terms of how much we're likely to be invested in her love for a guy who doesn't really deserve it (though it's also true that she domesticates/redeems Tracy a lot more over the course of Man's Castle).

The supporting cast is excellent too. Arthur Hoyl is the aptly named Bragg who lusts after Young and tries to get her by fair means or foul. Marjorie Rambeau is a hardened perpetually drunken woman whose problems probably started a long time before the Great Depression started. Columbia stalwart Walter Connolly is an ex preacher living in the encampment who is quite gentle and fatherly with the other residents to the point that I wonder how he got there and how he stopped being a man of the cloth.

I'd highly recommend this one, which has only recently been restored.