A wide-open San Francisco, circa 1890, is the background for one of Howard Hawks‘s intelligent love triangles: Miriam Hopkins is a mail-order bride whose husband-to-be is killed on the night of her arrival; gambler Edward G. Robinson offers her protection, drifter Joel McCrea offers her solace. A boisterous film with a serious undertone provided by Hawks’s preoccupation with the moral compromise necessary for survival. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur scripted (1935).
An oddball genre hybrid, made at the dawn of sound (1929). Erich von Stroheim plays a mad ventriloquist, visibly relishing every word of Ben Hecht‘s arch dialogue; while he cracks up, his ex-wife rises to the top as a variety star, which provides the occasion for several very strange production numbers (originally in color). The direction, by James Cruze, is underwater slow, but there is something irresistible in the idea of a psychological thriller with music—this may have been the All That Jazz of its day.
distinctive features 