I Cover The Waterfront

Hard-boiled newspaperman Joe Miller (Ben Lyon) is caught between the woman he loves, Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert) and her father, Eli, a smuggler in 1933's most searing social issue melodrama. Fictionalized from the classic expose by Max Miller, director James Cruze's film is a fluid black and white masterpiece.

One year after making I Cover The Waterfront, Colbert went on to achieve superstardom and won an Oscar for her performance opposite Clark Gable in It Happened One Night. First seen in Waterfront skinny-dipping in the moonlight, Colbert teases Miller to the point of loosing his journalistic ethics in a tale that strikes alarmingly contemporary chords.

• drama