BARBARY COAST

A young New Yorker arrives in the foggy, frenetic and crowded streets of San Francisco in 1849, amidst the gold diggers and gamblers. She is to marry the richest miner in town. When she learns of his death, she chooses not to give up her dream of becoming rich and is taken to the Bella Donna gambling hall, where Louis Chamalis, the most powerful and cruel man in town, falls in love with her. Although he does not marry her, he hires her to play roulette in order to lure the miners and take their fortune. Mary does not share Louis’ feelings, preferring James Carmichael, a young miner.
This love triangle and the town’s revolt against the greedy Chamalis become the subject of this film, initially rejected by Howard Hawks, who nevertheless managed, with the help of careful direction and a focus on the essential, to deliver his first western, marking the beginning of a more than profitable genre production and already presenting the leitmotivs present in all his productions.
The dialogues are particularly important. They are true poems of everyday life, which accompany the action filmed from natural angles, in the mist of a dreamy San Francisco, immortalised by Ray June’s Oscar-nominated photography.