“Howard Hawks was on the verge of finding his metier as a director of fast-moving comedies and adventure stories when he filmed this melodrama about deep sea fishermen off the Pacific Coast in 1932. There are elements of Ahab...in the character played by Edward G. Robinson, a Portuguese-born tuna boat captain who loses his left hand to a shark and his young wife to his handsome first mate. Zita Johann, as the wife, is an early embodiment of the typically free-spirited, tough-minded Hawks woman. When she realizes that she and Richard Arlen, as Robinson's best friend, are in love with each other, she is the one who initiates their affair. Hawks sustained a slower tempo and a more romantic mood than he did in later films...helped considerably by Tony Gaudio's beautifully modulated photography. It was unusual to shoot away from the studio during the early days of sound, but Hawks took his cast and crew to Monterey to film the outdoor sequences of the story. The scenes of tuna-fishing and unloading a catch at the cannery have a documentary authenticity that recalls Melville's descriptions of whaling in Moby Dick.” Charles Hopkins, Filmex '84 UCLA Film Archives Tribute