I Cover the Waterfront

               

James Cruze's I Cover the Waterfront, from 1933, is a raucous pre-Code melodrama set in an anonymous San Diego. Ben Lyon plays a reporter assigned to the titular beat who is investigating a fishing boat Captain (Ernest Torrence) suspected of ferrying illegal Chinese immigrants into the country. In one shocking scene, the Captain and his minions casually wrap an immigrant in chains and drop him to the bottom of the sea so as to avoid being busted by the Coast Guard. I Cover the Waterfront has the saltiness and vigor of the best pre-Code features: there is sex galore, torture devices, jokes about lesbians, much flouting of Prohibition, and the casual racism of the era.

Wells Root's screenplay is very loosely adapted from Max Miller's book based on his exploits as a reporter for the San Diego Sun. A love interest for the reporter was introduced in the person of the Captain's daughter played by Claudette Colbert. Ms. Colbert, as was her want, wears a little too much makeup for a wharf rat, but delivers her gutsiest and most full bodied performance. She was always best when a little sauciness was allowed to puncture her glamorous facade as in It Happened One Night, Cleopatra, and The Palm Beach Story. She gets to show a little unfulfilled potential in a scene where she physically chastises a hooker who has rolled her Dad. Her rapport with Lyon, who is serviceable, is good. The two create some chemistry despite Cruze posing them on dock sets with subpar rear projection backdrops.

Her scenes with Torrence are even better and it is his performance that is the best in the film. A Scottish actor with nearly fifty film credits, Torrence was one of the leading supporting actors of the silent era and was poised to carry on in the sound era. His performance here captures the grandiosity of a character quite willing to live above morality in order to further his own ends. Highlights of his career include Tol'able Davy, Clopin in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Peter in The King of Kings, Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes, and Buster Keaton's father in Steamboat Bill Jr.. His six foot four frame often gave him hulking villain roles, but he could also play more avuncular roles as he did in Cruze's biggest hit, The Covered Wagon. The pity was that Torrence died soon after the completion of I Cover the Waterfront. He would have made a memorable Ahab.

Because it was an independent feature released by United Artists, I Cover the Waterfront's copyright lapsed years ago. There are a lot of truncated and bowdlerized versions floating about. The version on Tubi is a cautionary example, seemingly a dupe of a version cut for television broadcast in the fifties. As William K. Everson noted in his lecture on the film in 1953, what could be shown in the theaters pre-Code could not be shown on television in America two decades later. The version on Tubi is extremely murky and has been snipped of ten minutes, particularly a lengthy and key scene in a bordello. The version currently streaming on Max is the real deal, as is the Film Detective DVD.