BARBARY COAST is basically a 30s gangster picture in Victorian dress. Edward G. Robinson plays Louis, a criminal genius in billowy-sleeved shirts and a pirate earring who runs old-time San Francisco like a mafia boss. Miriam Hopkins is his gold-digging moll and partner-in-crime, while Joel McCrea is the poetic dreamer whose love lassoes Miriam back to respectability. It's a plot you see over and over in plenty of contemporary crime melodramas in the 20s and 30s, which makes it quite novel to see it in a lavish period picture like this one.
I love watching all three of the principal actors in just about anything, but for me Robinson owns the movie, full stop. He's a power-hungry, bullying braggart willing to lie, cheat, and murder to have his way, but by the end, he does have a streak of nobility in him. He's a multi-faceted figure, a thug dressed in gentleman's clothes, a poet just as much yearning for romance as McCrea's conventional love interest character. His performance reminded me a bit of Lon Chaney Sr, who so often specialized in misfits who substitute power for the love they've been denied.
Hopkins and McCrea do well enough, though they don't have as much to work with. Hopkins is better at playing the cold, calculating side of her character than the alleged sensitive creature the audience is told she truly is when McCrea shows up to seduce her away from her gold-digging ways. By the second half, Hopkins is both less interesting as a character and far less interesting in performance, hamming it up to heaven during the big romantic scenes. McCrea is game as always, though he appears relatively late in the movie and never gets to make a lasting impression.
That aside, I did enjoy BARBARY COAST. It's a fun, old-school melodrama with tons of fun wild west tropes and a great villain. Can't ask for much more than that.
I love watching all three of the principal actors in just about anything, but for me Robinson owns the movie, full stop. He's a power-hungry, bullying braggart willing to lie, cheat, and murder to have his way, but by the end, he does have a streak of nobility in him. He's a multi-faceted figure, a thug dressed in gentleman's clothes, a poet just as much yearning for romance as McCrea's conventional love interest character. His performance reminded me a bit of Lon Chaney Sr, who so often specialized in misfits who substitute power for the love they've been denied.
Hopkins and McCrea do well enough, though they don't have as much to work with. Hopkins is better at playing the cold, calculating side of her character than the alleged sensitive creature the audience is told she truly is when McCrea shows up to seduce her away from her gold-digging ways. By the second half, Hopkins is both less interesting as a character and far less interesting in performance, hamming it up to heaven during the big romantic scenes. McCrea is game as always, though he appears relatively late in the movie and never gets to make a lasting impression.
That aside, I did enjoy BARBARY COAST. It's a fun, old-school melodrama with tons of fun wild west tropes and a great villain. Can't ask for much more than that.