Ceux de la zone

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.

Man's Castle is a wonderful example of a Pre-Code film. It involves realistic events with truly enjoyable and imperfect characters. Spencer Tracy plays Bill, a free soul without a dime in his pocket. He makes a living doing odd jobs and traveling to a new city when he gets bored of his surroundings. One night, he meets Trina, a beauty by any standards who is cold and alone. She has refused to resort to prostitution so she has not eaten for several days, but the two take very well to each other and form a relationship. His free spirit tempts him to leave her, so life is rocky, but there is a true spark between the two, even if they live in a shack by the river.

Tracy is one of the great actors of the silver screen. His characters are amazing and relatable. We can see his thoughts on his face, making him easy to identify with, even if we believe he is behaving badly. Young is great in pre-code films. Her character is very sweet but far from perfect, making her all the more likable.

Pre-code elements include skinny dipping, pregnancy before marriage, and crime.

This is a curious but wonderfully acted love story. The protagonists are not your typical love-struck young romantic couple but complicated broken people just about surviving the poverty of living in one of the Hooverville shanty towns of 1932's New York. There's not a lot of humour in this drama but that doesn't make it at all miserable and depressing. It's not like a badly written naïve play where happiness blooms in the face of adversity - it's more thoughtful than that but is nevertheless quite uplifting.

Spencer Tracy's character, Bill is the absolute opposite of a romantic hero. He is such a well written character played so well by Spencer Tracy that we really don't really know what he is like, who he is or what he's done. We would however love to find out who is really there behind that façade or how he got like that. On the surface he seems to be an unpleasant battle-scared shell of a man incapable of expressing any emotion, feelings or even sense of being part of society.

Loretta Young's 'Trina' could not be more different. She is from a different place to Bill, she is from a world that disappeared when Wall Street crashed three years ago and is a complete stranger to the world Bill seems so comfortable in. She longs for love and longs for the impossible dream of a happy life in this upside down world. Loretta Young's almost impossible prettiness adds to the tragedy and pathos of her character who seems so lost, so unable to cope with the life she now has to live. Bill is her lifeline and she's not going to let go. She throws herself into the fantasy of happiness with him despite being treated like his slave, despite the constant emotional cruelty and despite Bill having a fling with the local show-girl. If this story were written today, she would be the archetypical battered, mentally and physically abused wife, not leaving her abusive husband because she knows deep down that he loves her.

This has the feel of being a really good drama that you'd pay good money to watch live in a cramped theatre. It's a mature and surprisingly subtle look at how love - if indeed it is love, can happen in the most unlikely of places. Although it is quite stylised, especially the camp which doesn't look as awful as I suspect in reality it was, as a motion picture it is excellent. Director Frank Borzage creates an enclosed real little world inhabited by real people which plays with your emotions. Sometimes you're hoping Trina and Bill will stay together and live happily ever after - sometimes you're hoping something or someone will separate them because you can see that it's a destructive relationship. It's also beautifully filmed and although it gets a little slow at times is still entertaining and stays in your mind long after the final credits.

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.