Barbary Coast

Howard Hawks's 1935 American film is set in San Francisco in the 1850s and follows Mary, who arrives to find her fiancé dead and goes to work for the city's most powerful gambling boss. She fleeces customers at the roulette wheel; falling in love with a miner upsets the arrangement. The film was made in the years the Hays code came into force and the screenplay was softened repeatedly as a result; Mary's occupation and the city's vice pass only by implication. Even so Hawks's telling is fast and his use of space strong, with the harbour sequences in fog particularly fine. The tension between Edward G. Robinson and Miriam Hopkins carries it. The ending is too corrective. Who it's for: viewers who like classic Hollywood and Howard Hawks's early work. Who it's not for: anyone troubled by the censorship of the period weakening the story, or wanting fast action.