Man’s Castle

Wednesday, May 24 at 7:30 PM — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door

MAN’S CASTLE
Directed by Frank Borzage • 1933
Yesterday, Bill (Spencer Tracy) was a walking advertisement. This morning he was a process server. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? Bill can talk his way into a meal but can’t talk himself out of his love for Trina (Loretta Young), the streetwise gamine who dreams of a real stove, the kind that doesn’t just fall off a truck. Mercifully produced before the Production Code clamped down on moonlit skinny-dipping and shanty cohabitation, Man’s Castle is an uncommonly honest picture, an emotional jackhammer that suggests that love is, above all, an act of responsibility. Along with After Tomorrow and Little Man, What Now?, this picture is one of Frank Borzage’s earnest valentines to working class life at the bottom of the Great Depression, its stark precarity hardly softened by a dollop of Hollywood glamour. (Never released on home video, its subterranean influence can nevertheless be felt in such seemingly unexpected corners as They Live, John Carpenter’s Reagan-era update.) With a witty script by Jo Swerling, a Ukrainian émigré who wrote many of Capra’s early pictures, and lovely cinematography by Joseph August that finds an ethereal glow in back alleys and toy store vaults, Man’s Castle is simply one of our consensus favorites, its very title shorthand for the kind of film whose every projection feels like a delicate gift shoplifted by a sweetheart. (KW)
66 min • Columbia Pictures • 35mm from Sony Pictures Repertory

Co-presented with Those Were the Days

Preceded by two recently preserved shorts from our friends at the Chicago Film Archives:

“Paying the Piper” (1936) – 1 min – 35mm
An anti-New Deal theatrical short that mocks “wasteful” government spending on the arts and humanities. The film was most likely produced by the Jam Handy Organization in 1936, as part of a series of “Republican Shorts” sponsored by the mysterious “Crusaders on the Screen.”

“Variety Show at Peoria’s Palace Theatre” (Irvine Pepper Siegel, 1934) – 10 min – 35mm
Scenes of a lively Depression-era talent show in which Peoria, Illinois’ youth show off their skills in tap dancing, gymnastics, and Mae West impersonation.