Min Divot’s life is like her surname, her small piece of ground ripped out by forces beyond her control. Marie Dressler as the titular Min absolutely owns this film as Director George Hill focuses his narrative almost exclusively upon her: Bill (Wallace Beery) and the ingenue Nancy (Dorothy Jordan) are just subordinate characters to her Alpha performance!
The plot is quite simple: Min is investigated by Child Protective Services because her “adopted” daughter Nancy, who works long hours in her dockside tavern, has failed to register for school. But it’s how the story of Min’s life is depicted, her hardscrabble existence told with intimacy, bleakness and shocking violence in which she retains her self-respect against the odds, a woman whose love once earned cannot be forfeited. It’s not difficult to see why Depression-era audiences adored this film as Min is the pathos of Great Depression personified; she is victimized but not victim, she is both survivor and savior. Bill is her tempestuous paramour, a drunken dockworker who is easily tempted by forbidden fruit (or illegal hooch) yet whose boyish and aw-shucks charm seems to win Min’s forgiveness, though it may take a knock-down drag-out brawl to earn her tender mercies! Min’s relationship with Nancy is aggressively overprotective and restrictive yet one feels her motherly instincts beneath the illusion of callousness. Dorothy Jordan portrays Nancy as the waifish teen whose angst is in full bloom, struggling with her own independence and identity against Min’s dominance.
Min’s lie is soon to be exposed as Nancy's biological mother Bella appears like a ghostly haze of cheap whiskey, stinking up her establishment and threatening to exploit her daughter. As Min deflects Bella’s allegations and keeps Nancy and Child Protective Services from discovering the truth, Min makes the ultimate sacrifice for her daughter proving that a being true mother transcends biology. The violence is shocking but not unexpected, per the maxim of Chekhov’s Gun. And Min’s final moment of despair as she silently observes her daughter leaving for a better life as police close in, and while in custody she holds her head confidently and smiles, just a bit, at the chance she has given Nancy at attaining her dream, is fucking sublime.
Final Grade: (A)
