Vicino alle stelle

This is very dated, but that's part of the charm with this 1933 movie. You can say the same for most Pre-Code films; they're just different, and usually in an interesting way.

It was the short running time, the great acting of Spencer Tracy and the beautiful face and sweetness of Loretta Young's character which kept me watching and enjoying this stagy-but-intriguing film.

You'd be hard-pressed to find a nicer girl than "Trinna," played by the 20-year-old Young who was already into making her 50th movie! (She started acting as a small child. That, and the fact they made movies quickly back in the old days.) The camera, although in soft focus throughout much of the film, zoomed in on Loretta's face and eyes many times and I was mesmerized by her beauty.

Playing a crotchety man with a cynical outlook on life, Tracy's "Bill" slowly transformed into a loving man, thanks to Trinna. Spencer delivered his lines here with such naturalness that you hardly knew he was acting.

Although they have small roles, supporting actors Walter Connolly, Marjorie Rambeau, Arthur Hohl and Glenda Farrell leave lasting impressions long after viewing this 75-minute film. I was particularly fascinated with Connolly's role as the minister/father figure of the camp.

The story is a little far-fetched but - hey - that's the movies. This story is about two lonely Great Depression victims trying to survive in a "Hooverville"-type camp and it winds up to be a very touching tale.

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.

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 haven't seen this for years, but I remember both Spencer and Loretta being as hot as a pistol, brimming with talent and longing. Interesting pre-code depiction of tramp-town down by the river. There's a sparkling scene of Spencer working as a sandwich-board man. Great photography which shows the influence of Murnau's Sunrise.

My parents lived through the depression, and they would have found themselves right at home in the world of Man's Castle. Bill's roughness is entirely appropriate for the times, given that he must live by his wits in a difficult world. Trina's sweetness seems a bit unreal, given the cynicism of our times, but I believed in it because Loretta Young gives a very natural and moving performance. She was only 20 and acts like a much more experienced performer.

The romanticism of the movie is wonderful to see. Borzage--whose work I'd never seen before--believes in what he's doing and makes us believe in it too. Roosevelt is fresh in the White House and there is a spirit of hope and renewal in the country. I could criticize the editing for being a little too abrupt (cutting the film down to fit the B part of a double-bill), as an example the scene with Bill and Fay in her rooms, but that doesn't detract from my admiration.