Gold Is Where You Find It

Despite the rather banal and slightly over-cute title for the film, 'Gold is Where You Find It' had more than enough to make me want to watch it. Max Steiner composed some timeless scores and was one of the great film composers at that time. Michael Curtiz directed many good to classic films, two being among my favourite films of all time. And the cast is a fine one, although George Brent was somewhat inconsistent Claude Rains in particular made every film he was in better.

'Gold is Where You Find It' is worth a one-time watch, but it is not one of those watch it over and over sort of films in my view. It is neither awful, with enough good things to raise it above that, or particularly good, with too many significant flaws. While most people come off well here in 'Gold is Where You Find It', it is perhaps safe to say that all have done a lot better in their careers. That's certainly the case with Curtiz, as far as his films go this is a lesser effort of his.

There are good things. On the most part, 'Gold is Where You Find It' is well made visually, the settings are sumptuous and in no way look cheap. Much of the Technicolor has a lavish look, even if this aspect isn't perfectly executed. Steiner's music score is typically lush and sweeping without being too melodramatic. There are charming moments.

Brent gives it his best shot in a colourless role, can understand actually why some found him bland in the film but it is not easy making a character this thin interesting and Brent at least doesn't look bored. The rest of the cast are better though, with the ever great Rains stealing every scene he's in and with Olivia DeHavilland looking beautiful and having a charming presence. The supporting cast are good all round.

Not all the Technicolor is completely attractive on the other hand, some of it can veer on being too garish. The script is on the stilted and routine side, and while the story has moments of charm the pace generally could have done with more urgency, the conflict with more tension and edge and the sentiment not been as strong.

Moreover, the characters while well performed are quite sketchy in development, namely Brent's. Do agree with those that have criticised the narration, far too saccharine, doesn't really move the story along all that much and was not really needed at all.

In conclusion, left me a bit mixed. 5/10

Most of the prior reviewers have done a good job of noting the problems with this film but, in the terms relative to Hollywood, historical accuracy is not one of them. Hydraulic mining WAS environmentally catastrophic, but for the farmers and ranchers who lived downstream it was also economically so, a point not emphasized by many modern environmentalists with a narrow focus. The value of this film is that it graphically and realistically tells that side of the story, too, in human and economic terms. Fellow lawyers will laugh at the jump in the appellate process from the USDC for the Eastern District of California to the California Supreme Ct., (the case was actually litigated in the USDC for the Northern District of CA, in San Francisco), but the message comes through: hydraulic mining WAS a grave nuisance and it was effectively ended, at least in CA and much of the US, by the decisions that issued from the lawsuits involved, even if subsequent legislation allowed it to reappear, with some constraints on its worst effects, in the final decade of the XIX century.

I never even knew of this movie until I watched it on TCM this morning - and I'm glad I did! It's apparently unavailable on DVD, which is a shame, and it would benefit from a thorough restoration, but I don't fault the direction or performances as much as some others do. In fact, that's one of the interesting and appealing things about this film: it tentativeness. You get the feeling that the director and actors are exploring the script as much as Warners was still exploring the Technicolor process involved in its making. That meshes well with the scenes of San Francisco during the 1880s, in all its pre-quake and proto-profligate heyday, where the mindless joi de vivre flows as fast as the champagne to set the mood for the disaster later to come.

There's a lot of history on several levels in this movie: the reference to former Confederates emigrating to CA after the Civil War, a slightly off-color racial joke that some might find offensive, and some others I won't spoil for cinematic spelunkers. But, don't sell this movie short: watch it, enjoy it, and hope for its restoration so its several qualities can shine through its more gravelly parts.

I generally agree with the majority of my fellow IMDBers that in their understandable zeal to tell a late Depression era, populist story where the villain is Big Mining (as personified by Barton MacLane and Sidney Toler) scenarists Robert Buckner and Warren Duff forgot to make their characters interesting. The result is fairly long stretches of boredom involving a really dull love story between George Brent and Olivia DeHavilland and a tepid father/son conflict between Claude Raines and eternal spoiled brat Tim Holt. The movie does come alive at certain points. Michael Curtiz is too good an action director for it not to. I love the denouement with the evil hydraulic miners drowning in their own watery muck. Truly an ending that would have pleased Frank Norris. But in general this is pretty much low grade schlock. And can we please lose the gratuitous racism, please? Solid C.

You've seen this picture before - with a different title and a different cast. It's the one about two warring factions (here, miners and wheat growers) battling over precious land while she (Olivia deHavilland, daughter of the most prominent wheat grower) and he (George Brent, employed by the mining syndicate) fall in love. All very conventional, despite a solid cast and first-rate production values.

Clumsy off-screen narration at both the beginning and end attempts to give this story a documentary feel and some measure of historical significance. Did the film makers tack this on because they felt the story lacked significance and originality? I did.

Not much distinction to this routine western, aside from the fact that it introduced Olivia de Havilland to the screen for the first time in technicolor. Unfortunately, neither her role nor the film itself are ever able to rise above the routine dimensions of a weak script. George Brent stars as the miner in conflict with de Havilland's rancher father Claude Rains.

It takes place in the 1870s and has a narration at the beginning and end that tells us this was meant to be an important little "epic" for the Warner studio. Despite some solid scenes of mining operations and an agreeable enough cast that includes Tim Holt (as de Havilland's brother), Margaret Lindsay and Sidney Toler (before his Charlie Chan days), the story itself is a weakness guaranteed to produce yawns long before the rambling tale reaches an action-filled finish. But by then, you're not likely to be paying too much attention.

Of all of the early ingenue roles de Havilland had at Warner Bros., this is definitely one of her weakest. It seems that when she wasn't playing opposite Flynn, she had no real leading man. Charisma between her and Brent is sorely lacking.