Here it is, 1935, and Spencer Tracey as the ruthless but not heartless entrepreneur gone wrong is already the Spencer Tracey of twenty years later, utterly believable as an ordinary guy. His style is perfectly natural. I was tempted to attribute his being so comfortable on screen with his previous stage experience but it can't be that. The early sound years were filled with Broadway actors with all kinds of fustian mannerisms, shouting their lines as if projecting to the balconies, overdoing their gestures for the sight-challenged, and pronouncing words like New York as "Nyew York," an affectation borrowed from a relatively recent development in the British regional dialect of a few hundred years ago.
Of course his range, like every other actor's, had its limits. I don't see him as King Lear. I don't see him as any king at all. But as a representation of everyman, he can hardly be beat. Even his face. That face. Lionel Barrymore shouldn't worry.
It's a familiar story. Tracey begins as a low-down stoker promoting bets on who can stoke coal the fastest. Thrown off the ship, he's befriended by a couple of people at a carnival, one of whom, Henry B. Walthall, who has a face that belongs on a monument, buys him a meal out of kindness and offers him a job as the run-down show place he owns. "Dante's Inferno" is just a path through different levels of hell, populated by statues in various stages of suffering. It's making no money but Walthall is satisfied because it gives him a chance to sell a moral message against sinning.
Tracey gets the place up and running. By shady means he acquires the whole amusement park and builds Dante's Inferno into its showcase. He's a rich man and has married Walthall's pretty niece, young Claire Trevor. They have a son and Tracey is as happy as a pig in gumbo.
But then Tracey has to go and smoothly bribe a reluctant building inspector and Dante's Inferno comes crashing down in a flurry of plaster and dust, almost killing Walthall. The bribed building inspector commits suicide. Tracey is prosecuted for bribery but he lies on the stand -- very convincingly too. Trevor volunteers to testify and she perjures herself too, just to save their young boy the pain of having a father in the slams. Then she leaves Tracey and takes the kid with her, which is just as well because he's one of those frightfully cute kids. All kids are like that. I think they're born suffering from a medical condition called neotenosis that only maturation can cause to remit.
Anyhow, Tracey bets big on an off-shore gambling ship. Alas, there is a strike and the ship's captain, under Tracey's orders, hires some really irresponsible gutter types who feel like joining the first night's festivities and start ingurgitating pilfered champagne. Well, the hoi polloi don't know how to deal with champagne so we know what happens next.
The ship's ballroom is bigger than my whole house by a factor of ten. The featured act is a dance by a lady called Rita Cansino and a partner, before her hair was electrolyzed or whatever it's called and she became Rita Hayworth. Among the stokers is Don Ameche.
One of the drunken guests sets the ship on fire and chaos ensues. It's quite exciting. The memory of the Morro Castle fire, a burning ship in which 134 people died only the year before, was probably still fresh. The Paradise, like the Morro Castle, is beached, saving many lives. In the case of the Paradise, it was due to Tracey's heroism. More important, he learns that true love and real rectitude are better than plain old money.
If the performances are uniformly good -- and they are -- the director has nothing to be ashamed of either. He manages the often corny dialog with aplomb. The camera tilts slightly during scenes of disaster. He uses overhead shots and makes judicious use of silhouettes and shadows. The special effects folks went ape, and there is a boring ten-minute speechless extravaganza of semi-nude bodies writhing in agony in Dante's hell. Tracey himself is at least spared the damned biting and itching insects who attack everyone else who pursues self interest in Dante's limbo.
Of course his range, like every other actor's, had its limits. I don't see him as King Lear. I don't see him as any king at all. But as a representation of everyman, he can hardly be beat. Even his face. That face. Lionel Barrymore shouldn't worry.
It's a familiar story. Tracey begins as a low-down stoker promoting bets on who can stoke coal the fastest. Thrown off the ship, he's befriended by a couple of people at a carnival, one of whom, Henry B. Walthall, who has a face that belongs on a monument, buys him a meal out of kindness and offers him a job as the run-down show place he owns. "Dante's Inferno" is just a path through different levels of hell, populated by statues in various stages of suffering. It's making no money but Walthall is satisfied because it gives him a chance to sell a moral message against sinning.
Tracey gets the place up and running. By shady means he acquires the whole amusement park and builds Dante's Inferno into its showcase. He's a rich man and has married Walthall's pretty niece, young Claire Trevor. They have a son and Tracey is as happy as a pig in gumbo.
But then Tracey has to go and smoothly bribe a reluctant building inspector and Dante's Inferno comes crashing down in a flurry of plaster and dust, almost killing Walthall. The bribed building inspector commits suicide. Tracey is prosecuted for bribery but he lies on the stand -- very convincingly too. Trevor volunteers to testify and she perjures herself too, just to save their young boy the pain of having a father in the slams. Then she leaves Tracey and takes the kid with her, which is just as well because he's one of those frightfully cute kids. All kids are like that. I think they're born suffering from a medical condition called neotenosis that only maturation can cause to remit.
Anyhow, Tracey bets big on an off-shore gambling ship. Alas, there is a strike and the ship's captain, under Tracey's orders, hires some really irresponsible gutter types who feel like joining the first night's festivities and start ingurgitating pilfered champagne. Well, the hoi polloi don't know how to deal with champagne so we know what happens next.
The ship's ballroom is bigger than my whole house by a factor of ten. The featured act is a dance by a lady called Rita Cansino and a partner, before her hair was electrolyzed or whatever it's called and she became Rita Hayworth. Among the stokers is Don Ameche.
One of the drunken guests sets the ship on fire and chaos ensues. It's quite exciting. The memory of the Morro Castle fire, a burning ship in which 134 people died only the year before, was probably still fresh. The Paradise, like the Morro Castle, is beached, saving many lives. In the case of the Paradise, it was due to Tracey's heroism. More important, he learns that true love and real rectitude are better than plain old money.
If the performances are uniformly good -- and they are -- the director has nothing to be ashamed of either. He manages the often corny dialog with aplomb. The camera tilts slightly during scenes of disaster. He uses overhead shots and makes judicious use of silhouettes and shadows. The special effects folks went ape, and there is a boring ten-minute speechless extravaganza of semi-nude bodies writhing in agony in Dante's hell. Tracey himself is at least spared the damned biting and itching insects who attack everyone else who pursues self interest in Dante's limbo.