Man's Castle

New York in the Depression. On the riverbank there is a settlement of makeshift shacks where people who lost their work live. Bill is someone who wants no attachments and keeps saying he will get up and leave whenever he likes. He sees Trina sitting hungry in a park and buys her a meal, then takes her to his shack. She stays. He keeps saying he is going and does not go. Frank Borzage directs. Spencer Tracy plays Bill and Loretta Young plays Trina. It belongs to the period before the censorship code began to be strictly enforced in Hollywood, and that is plain: living together, scenes implying nudity and remarks about marriage that would not have passed in later years. The subject is poverty and the fear of attachment. As in Borzage's other films, material helplessness is set against emotional bonds and the film is on the side of the second. The shacks and the riverbank were built in a studio, but the design is realistic and refers directly to the unemployment camps of the period. Spencer Tracy does not play the character for sympathy; the man is selfish and coarse, and the narrative does not soften it. The film circulated in a shortened form in later years, with some scenes removed for a reissue after the code came in. Who it is for: viewers who like Hollywood cinema of the thirties and Borzage. Who it is not for: the melodrama is heavy, the woman is built through the gaze of the period, and the ending is abrupt.