Le harpon rouge

Tiger Shark (1932)

*** (out of 4)

A lonely fisherman (Edward G. Robinson) marries a girl out of pity only to see her fall in love with his best friend. Director Howard Hawks does a very good job at showing off a wide range of emotions from sentiment to laughs to some very intense shark attack scenes. Robinson clearly steals the show with his touching performance but the supporting roles are good too. Another highlight is seeing the old time assembly line of having the fish removed from the boat and cleaned all in the matter of minutes. Apparently Warner loved this story so much that they remade it three times within the next ten years including Robinson returning in Manpower.!!!

I had once taped this one off Italian TV (during a lengthy Howard Hawks season of films shown in English but with Italian subtitles) but my VCR developed a fault and the recording was subsequently unwatchable! I sure am glad to have caught up with it now… First of all, Edward G. Robinson is the whole show here: his portrayal of the central character, a Portuguese fisherman who sees himself as the best in the business and speaks in amiable broken English (his catchphrase is: "Absolutely indeed") is first-rate and it was also quite funny to watch him sporting an earring. The plot is predictable enough (a woman comes between two best friends and the situation is resolved through tragedy) but that may be because the same elements were recycled so many times, even by Warner Bros. themselves, over the years: SLIM (1937), THE WAGONS ROLL AT NIGHT (1941), Raoul Walsh's MANPOWER (1941; with Marlene Dietrich coming between Edward G. Robinson and George Raft), etc.

Even more importantly, however, the imprint of director Howard Hawks is all over it: the vivid recreation of a man's world, the bonds which grow stronger through the everyday adversity which that entails, the invasion of a woman into this enclosed world which sets about the inevitable tragedy, etc. In fact, the brotherly (or even father-son) relationship seen here between Robinson and his younger protégée, Richard Arlen, is reprised in many another Hawks film – Pat O'Brien and James Cagney in CEILING ZERO (1935), Thomas Mitchell and Cary Grant in ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939), Walter Brennan and Humphrey Bogart in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944), John Wayne and Dean Martin in RIO BRAVO (1959), etc; the unceremonious intrusion of the female character onto a perfectly ordered way of life is also seen enacted by Katharine Hepburn in BRINGING UP BABY (1938), Jean Arthur in ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, Barbara Stanwyck in BALL OF FIRE (1941), Lauren Bacall in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, Joanne Dru in RED RIVER (1948), Margaret Sheridan in THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), Angie Dickinson in RIO BRAVO, Elsa Martinelli in HATARI! (1962) and Paula Prentiss in MAN'S FAVORITE SPORT? (1964); early on, the "boys" in TIGER SHARK are gathered around drinking and singing to their hearts' content – a similar instance occurs also in ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, RIO BRAVO and HATARI! Besides Robinson's performance and the fascinating early look at the Hawksian themes elaborated on more fully in his later films, TIGER SHARK is also notable for its exciting fishing sequences especially the rather grisly (for their time) shark attacks; the scene where Robinson loses his hand to one of the marauding beasts is particularly effective.

Actually, this viewing of TIGER SHARK has reminded me of several notable films which Robinson appeared in around the same time but with which I'm not all that familiar having watched them only once years ago, namely TWO SECONDS (1932), THE MAN WITH TWO FACES (1934), John Ford's THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALIKING (1935), Hawks' own BARBARY COAST (1935), THE LAST GANGSTER (1937), A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER (1938), THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE (1938), CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939), THE SEA WOLF (1941) and MANPOWER!

Portuguese fisherman (Edward G. Robinson) loses a hand to a shark and later loses his young wife (Zita Johann) to his best friend (Richard Arlen). He doesn't like it. A simple plot that was reused by Warner Bros. many times over the years. It's an okay early film from Howard Hawks. Worth watching for Robinson's colorful performance. Eddie G's sporting an earring and a hook for a hand, folks. It's not Shakespeare but it's hard to look away. Real maritime footage is a plus. Classic horror fans will recognize Zita Johann from The Mummy, which was released this same year. She's a lot more subtle in this than in that film.

All the old-time Hollywood studios recycled their scripts, turning previously-filmed properties into remakes and then re-remakes. More so than any other studio, Warner Brothers were notorious for re-re-re-remaking their previous films with only very slight changes in setting and dialogue. "Tiger Shark" is an historically significant film, as this movie provided the original template for a plot line which Warners recycled about two dozen times ... each time with just enough changes to fool the audience into thinking they were seeing an original plot. Except for stories which are in the public domain (such as Cinderella), "Tiger Shark" holds the all-time record for being re-made MORE OFTEN than any other movie ... each remake being "disguised" as a new movie.

The basic plot is this: an older man with a physical handicap falls in love with an attractive young woman who owes him a favour. She marries him, more out of a sense of obligation than for love. Then she becomes attracted to a handsome young man who works alongside her handicapped husband. The young man returns her attraction, and they start having an affair. The husband discovers his wife's infidelity, and then (in the climax of the film) he and the younger man duke it out. That's the plot of "Tiger Shark", starring Edward G. Robinson, and it's also the plot of two dozen other Warners films which are uncredited remakes of "Tiger Shark".

Compare this film to "Manpower" (1941), also starring Robinson. In "Tiger Shark" he plays a one-handed fisherman, with a hook at the end of his left arm. In "Manpower" he plays an electrical lineman with a limp. In both films, his love interest is a younger woman with a European accent: Zita Johann here, Marlene Dietrich in "Manpower". Robinson's younger rival in "Tiger Shark" (played by Richard Arlen) is basically the same character as Robinson's rival in "Manpower" (George Raft). The climax of "Tiger Shark" is a fight on the seashore; the climax of "Manpower" is a fistfight at the top of a telephone pole during a lightning storm. Once you allow for the change of setting, they're both the same film. I could make the same connections between "Tiger Shark" and about two dozen other Warners films, not all of them starring Robinson.

"Tiger Shark" benefits from some excellent direction by Howard Hawks. Richard Arlen is unfairly forgotten nowadays, but he was the closest thing Hollywood had to Harrison Ford before Harrison Ford came along. (I'm referring of course to the modern Harrison Ford, not the silent-film actor of the same name.) Arlen gives a good performance here. Zita Johann is excellent here, hampered only by her thick accent. She retired early from films to marry the producer John Houseman, long before Houseman became an Oscar-winning actor. Johann's most famous role is the female lead in "The Mummy" opposite Boris Karloff. When Johann published her autobiography in the 1980s, the publishers' promo material played up the fact that Johann had co-starred with Karloff, but they managed to avoid mentioning *which* Karloff film she'd been in: apparently they were afraid we would think that Zita Johann was a "scream queen" actress who only starred in horror films.

I'll rate "Tiger Shark" 7 out of 10 on its own merits, or 9 points if you're an aspiring screenwriter who wants to study this film so you can learn how a single plot line can be reworked repeatedly.

Edward G. Robinson plays a one handed fisherman making his living on the California coast. Even with a hook for a left hand he does pretty good in his line of work. But that steel hook isn't exactly quail bait.

One of his crew is lost to the sharks during a voyage and he brings the news home to his daughter Zita Johann. She's back home after having run away from the fishing life and has had a pretty rough go of it.

Though she doesn't love him, Johann marries Robinson and then another Robinson's crew, Richard Arlen comes in to complicate things.

Other reviewers have mentioned the gazillion times Warner Brothers recycled the plot of Tiger Shark in other locales. But actually Robinson had done a version of They Knew What They Wanted back in 1930 entitled A Lady to Love. That's the real origin of this plot.

The fishing boat scenes are realistically handled and the principal players do a good job. But this story has been told better and told better by Mr. Robinson himself.