What happens when you take a top glamor star of depression era cinema, and put her in an unglamorous role with deep moral themes about religious hypocrisy? You get a critical & financial bomb at the box office. If your audience came in hoping to escape from their dire circumstances - and you give them a slow burning conflict of mores on opposite sides of the spectrum, they are not going to dig it. The critics will say the characters are ‘satisfactory’ or that the star is out of her depth.
I say - Bpppffftt! If you took that movie and redid it shot for shot today - it would sell. You probably could not fill theater seats with it. We don’t go to see these kinds of movies anymore; however, there are any number of streaming services that could / should reproduce it. It is public domain now, so that door is wide open.
The director did a great job (even if he is uncredited). The story was based on a play - and I would argue that you could almost stage it the same as he shot it.
Joan Crawford was good. The plot summary says she played a prostitute - I am not sure how we know that from the film. She seemed more like a woman who was not in the least bit prim, but I failed to see anything she did or said that implied she was trading herself for money. The so-called supporting cast were good, but the one other actor who made the bill, Walter Huston was a little too much of a stereotype. I think his wife should have been and was, but I thought his portrayal was a bit flat for what that part needed. For example, I sort of guessed how the climax would happen about 5 minutes before we got there, but I don’t think he sold the buildup very well. I was a little confused about what happened until the 3 minutes of wrap-up before the end credits. I can place part of the blame on the sound guy and modern TV speakers. It probably would have been more obvious with a decent sound system. *
This is a pre-code movie, and so I was looking out for what would become code violations. In this case, the most obvious one was when one soldiers slapped Ms. Crawford on the bum as she danced. I happened once - you could not actually see it, but the foley artist earned their pay & Ms. Crawford certainly acted accordingly. I could hear Will Hays sigh and shake his head.
*I think if you can tell what is going on without sound, that is a pretty good director + actor combination. Joan Crawford passed that test with excellent marks. Walter Huston got a C-minus.
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