The Beast of the City: Cop movies before they were polished

Is it worth your time?

If you like your crime dramas with a heavy dose of 1930s grittiness, absolutely. This isn't some polite, tidy procedural. It’s a fever dream of brass knuckles and bad attitudes. You should skip this if you need your heroes to have a clear moral compass or if you find old-school melodramatic acting a bit distracting.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Beast of the City (1932) through its definitive frames.

Watching Walter Huston go from a by-the-book guy to a man who basically decides he’s the judge, jury, and executioner is something else. He doesn't transition into a hard-boiled cop slowly. He just snaps. It’s like the movie realized it needed to get to the gunfire and didn't want to waste time on character development.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Beast of the City (1932) through its definitive frames.

There is this one scene—the shootout at the end—that goes on for an eternity. It feels less like a choreographed action set piece and more like a chaotic pile-up of bodies. The extras seem to just be running in circles waiting for their cue to fall over. It’s messy. It’s kind of glorious.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Beast of the City (1932) through its definitive frames.

Odd little things that stuck with me:

• Jean Harlow is just... hovering in the background of scenes, looking like she’s in a different movie entirely.
• The dialogue is so fast it sounds like everyone is trying to set a speed record before the cameras run out of film.
• The way the police chief yells at his own desk when he gets frustrated.
• The sheer amount of hats in every single frame. Seriously, why are they all wearing hats indoors?

The movie doesn't have the polish of, say, The Duchess of Doubt. It feels way more desperate. The pacing feels like it was edited with a pair of rusty garden shears. Sometimes the scenes just stop. Like the editor got bored and decided we didn't need to see the conclusion of the conversation.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Beast of the City (1932) through its definitive frames.

I found myself thinking about how much we take modern crime thrillers for granted. This film is just raw. It doesn't ask if what the police chief is doing is right. It just shows him doing it and expects you to keep up. He’s not a hero, he’s a wrecking ball.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Beast of the City (1932) through its definitive frames.

It’s not perfect. The moralizing at the start is a bit heavy-handed. But once the bullets start flying, the movie finds a weird, aggressive rhythm that’s hard to look away from. It’s not quite as weird as The Way of Lost Souls, but it definitely has a strange, jittery energy.

Go watch it if you want to see where the “rogue cop” trope really got its start. Just don't expect it to make any sense when you wake up the next morning. It’s a relic, but a mean one. 🚔