Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Assistant director: Lesley Selander. Music editor: W. Donn Hayes. Sound recording: Douglas Shearer. Producer: David O. Selznick. Executive producer: William Randolph Hearst. Copyright 3 May 1934 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. A Cosmopolitan picture. New York opening at both the Capitol and Loew's Metropolitan, 4 May 1934. U.S. release: 6 May 1934. U.K. release: 27 October 1934. London opening at the Empire, 24 May 1934. Australian release: 19 September 1934. 9 reels. 93 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Two orphan boys are adopted by a kindly Jewish tailor. One grows up to become assistant district attorney, the other a gangster.NOTES: Academy Award, Arthur Caesar, Original Story (defeating Hide- Out by Mauri Grashin and The Richest Girl in the World by Norman Krasna).Shooting commenced 12 March 1934 and finished 3 April 1934 (one day ahead of schedule). Five days of re-takes were then directed by George Cukor and photographed by Oliver T. Marsh.Negative cost: $355,000. Gross domestic rentals: $770,000.COMMENT: Fast-paced, brilliantly directed melodrama. Van Dyke's stylish attention to detail (the way Gable throws the key away; the lights dimming off in the prison corridor), his mastery of crowd scenes (the stairway to the fight — before and after) and expertise with set- pieces (the excursion fire; the two murders) have never been better realized than here. He receives a big assist from the clipped film editing of Ben Lewis. The dialogue is witty ("Thanks for returning my coat. Admittedly, it was a rather roundabout way") and realistic ("Mr. Wade is late. We will start without him."), a credit to screenwriters Garrett and Mankiewicz. The photography of Jimmy Wong Howe is also a major asset, though he tends to photograph Gable and Loy at Powell's expense. The special effects by Slavko Vorkapich are most effective, the sets contrive to look both attractive and realistic. There's also a smart song by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.OTHER VIEWS: It is certainly a melodrama and yet it is put across with a great deal of style and flair, well acted, expansively produced and its implied social comment more the type of film that might be expected of Warner Bros. than MGM. A particularly trenchant attack on the New York police force who are presented on the one hand as murdering conscienceless thugs and on the other as cheerful grifters and grafters. Morally, it's quite daring for MGM too with Myrna Loy's sassy, self-possessed gangster's moll and Clark Gable as the breezy, charming, lying, cheating, murdering thug. One can certainly detect Mankiewicz's hand in the smart dialog. Comic relief Nat Pendleton and his equally unfunny moll, let us hope, owe their existence to the pen of Mr. Garrett. The hokey priest so sententiously played by Leo Carillo (fortunately his part is small) also smells of Garrett's ink, but there is a fine music score. And I love the atmospheric photography by James Wong Howe. Arthur Caesar's original story was to be re-used extensively by Hollywood. He deserved his Academy Award many times over! – John Howard Reid writing as George Addison.

OUTSTANDING FILM FARE from beginning to end, MANHATAN MELODRSMA represents the very zenith of the motion picture of its day. The mounting, the sets, the large cast and the story line all mesh very well into a collectively made work of art.AS SWE HAVE alluded to in the summary, this is chock full of what we may consider as being clichéd situations and plot twists. In that sense, it also may well be highly predictable. This is only true because it was introducing story lines that would be fed through the Hollywood Xerox machines for the next 20 years or so. After all, nothing succeeds like success and those in Tinsel Town never minded copying, borrowing or stealing from one another. In this manner, many types or genres were established.THE STORY SHOWCASES big city life among the working poor, the "blue collar" folks, the polyglot of ethnicities that were blended into what we know as Americans Growing up is demonstrated in two diverging paths, one straight the other the criminal. As is the case all too often n real life, the two paths may well move in very different directions; yet they begin perilously close together. IN ADDITION TOM the outstanding cast of Mr. Gable, Mr. Powell and Miss Loy, the bolstering of their performances by a large and very capable supporting cast and the previously mentioned origination of the genre, the polish that is evident is largely due to its being directed by W.S. Van Dyke. THE FILM HAS also had an everlasting mystique shrouding it because of the event of July 22, 1931. It seems that notorious bank robber, John Dillinger, wanted to see it very badly and went to see it with two others in Chicago that night at the Biograph Theatre. It was following the showing that Dillinger met his maker in a shoot out with the FBI and local Chicago cops. Because of this, the Biograph, with its "Cooled by Refrigeration" sign, remains open today as a tourist attraction on north Lincoln Avenue.WE WONDER JUST what sort of review Mr. Dillinger would have given the movie ?

What a year Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and William Powell had in 1934, huh? They all act together in this film, Manhattan Melodrama, directed by WS Van Dyke and co-written by a young Joseph L. Makiewicz, and meanwhile Gabe earlier in the year was in It Happened One Night (ironically Loy was up for the role Colbert played), and later that year The Thin Man, which kicked off in a major way the star power of Powell and Loy together, came out and became a massive hit. All the films either won or got nominated for Oscars, and yet this film is kind of now on the B-side/double-bill. And to be sure, it's not as smashing or have the same re-watchability as those other films, which are considered among the best of 30's Hollywood (rightfully so, especially for the Thin Man). But Manhattan Melodrama shouldn't be discounted too quickly - at the least it's more than the simple footnote of Dillinger's pre-death-flick (I can relate - I would be there to see Myrna Loy, too).The film actually reminds me a bit of a later 30's flick, Angels with Dirty Faces - that film too was about two childhood friends, New Yorkers all the way, who go through paths in life that diverse, one to crime, the other to a more professional/helpful path. In this case, Powell and Gable play childhood friends who lose their parents in a boat accident, get raised by a new father, who also later on meets a sad fate. Powell becomes a lawyer, then a prosecutor for the state and, eventually, governor, while Gable is always the gambler, the gangster, the guy who just wants to have a good time. And Loy plays the girl who doesn't really come between them as stay friendly-if-neutral to Blackie while marrying Jim Wade - that, give the movie credit, would've been an easy direction for the melodrama as a love triangle, but it's more complicated, to be sure.The script gives its actors some good dramatic dialog to chew on, and among all the roles Gable probably gets to have the most fun while playing a not-too-good guy. It's a decent script once it gets its footing - the early childhood scenes are quite weepy, if shot and edited strikingly for fast, hard effect (and featuring a young Mickey Rooney!) - and it's a case where the actors elevate the material just a little more. This has star power to burn; the actors all click together, and no wonder with Loy, but Gable and Powell work very well and believably together too, with the conflicts that come up between the brothers - of law and order vs the gangster way, albeit this isn't as harsh a look as 'Angels' - and how the dynamics subtly change over time.You might not think there's any arc here, but there are, at the least with Powell's Jim Wade who gets on the rise as a law-and-order man but has this friend who could be his downfall. Loy is naturally beautiful without even having to try anything super-glamorous; she almost as a thing here like a young Diane Keaton, kind of sexy in a way that's hard to describe but plainly there in the sophistication of every movement and acting choice. And Gable... he's Gable - but watch for him in the last scene he has with Powell, he goes between a range of emotions that is just electrifying to watch (for me more believable than almost anything in Gone with the Wind).If Manhattan Melodrama is successful, and I think it is, it's because watching these actors - stars - in these roles, acting their asses off to make this more than believable, rather natural work, and van Dyke has some nice directorial choices. Conventional? Sure. But it's a moving little effort.

The first is a smart, sophisticated, snappy romp with Cable, Loy and Powell lighting up the screen. Hell, turn off the sound and just watch the light. Then turn it back on to catch the dialog that matches it. Better than Mr. Lucky and that's saying a lot.Second movie is the courtroom/prison drama that plays a lot like Production Code Censoring. Mankiewicz manages to make it believable and even establish, or at least presage, standard Death Row bravado - which Gable is able to pull off with panache. Even so, the introduction, or imposition, of all of the stock elements of code morality, no matter how gamely handled by writer and cast, was not a plus.Saw Manhattan Melodrama first time as a kid and was mightily impressed. Even with the second part (though slightly confused by the sudden change in tone). It played for me then as individuals taking responsibility for their actions.Just saw it again on TMC and was struck by how well it aged. But the murder and the courtroom/prison drama didn't play anywhere closely as well as I remembered: it reeked of Code dictated morality that almost ruined my memory of it.Almost but not quite. Except for Powell's resignation speech that ends Manhattan (which should have fallen to the cutting-room floor), Cable, Loy and Powell save it in the best tradition of flawed, improbable endings that Hollywood is so eminently well-know for.If the conflict between friendship and duty had been allowed to play out more in tone with the first part, more naturally and with a touch of realism, who knows? Critics and public alike might still remember it as a Classic.Bottom line, despite the flaws of the second part, still one of the '30s must see, A-list films.