I have just watched this twice and while the title is misleading, the film if actually good.
The film boasts moody dark photography and eerie light effects (especially in the ghost house) that is quite striking. When Eric Von S did it critics raved and this director does it better despite not being known by the critics. The director also does gritty slums scenes and newspaper scenes with gritty details you don't expect in 1920 movies from MGM. His script is honest too. The vamp is not really a vamp and the boss is not a bounder despite keeping the vamp as a mistress. There is no 'happy ending' tacked on. The boy and girl walk away and continue living their lives wiser if not more happy.
J Engels is a cult now because of her short life and tragic talent and she is good as the society writer determined to survive in an exploitative world. She is never melodramatic and the last sight of her peering out of a back window of her limo is striking. The woman is not good. She is not bad. She is just a surviver. The 1920s usually does not show that aspect of working women so that is unusual.
Gilbert did this film the same year as 'Show' which features him in an gaudy cad role of a sexy bounder. That makes this film interesting because Gilbert is trying to do the exact opposite of the Show: playing a naive 18 year old kid who falls head over heels in love with the first girl he dates after an aborted visit to a brothel he is too scared to consummate. Sure the kid is a sap and a 'mother's boy' but why did Gilbert try the role? Gilbert plays the kid very callow, naive, and unhand some (Gilbert is clean shaved and so very unhand some) and he is no catch. When he panics after killing the boss he runs away and hides in the ghost house. The moody light effects are very effective as he cowers in the shadows, his white handkerchief fluttering like a ghost. When his mother comes with the police in tow he cowers in her arms like a little boy. Not heroic but his fingers patting and stroking her sleeve are tiny touching details.
Gilbert plays the part of the kid very well (even if it is not a sexy, swaggering part) and it is to his credit he tries this part at all. He does not make the boy brave and ends the film only a little wiser and much sadder. You wonder what will happen to the mother's boy next. He does not seem promising. The movie offers no happy ending or promise of a future happy ending. So you are left to wonder.
The writer director based it on a book so he was limited. He should have made the prologue of the boy and girl from opposite sides of the tracks the same two grown ups seen later. That would have been more effective. But apparently the book does not say that even if the film would have been more effective if liberties had been taken.
Ignore the title and give the film a chance and be surprised. I think (despite the bad quality of the print and pasted on can music) you will like it.
J E F Rose
The film boasts moody dark photography and eerie light effects (especially in the ghost house) that is quite striking. When Eric Von S did it critics raved and this director does it better despite not being known by the critics. The director also does gritty slums scenes and newspaper scenes with gritty details you don't expect in 1920 movies from MGM. His script is honest too. The vamp is not really a vamp and the boss is not a bounder despite keeping the vamp as a mistress. There is no 'happy ending' tacked on. The boy and girl walk away and continue living their lives wiser if not more happy.
J Engels is a cult now because of her short life and tragic talent and she is good as the society writer determined to survive in an exploitative world. She is never melodramatic and the last sight of her peering out of a back window of her limo is striking. The woman is not good. She is not bad. She is just a surviver. The 1920s usually does not show that aspect of working women so that is unusual.
Gilbert did this film the same year as 'Show' which features him in an gaudy cad role of a sexy bounder. That makes this film interesting because Gilbert is trying to do the exact opposite of the Show: playing a naive 18 year old kid who falls head over heels in love with the first girl he dates after an aborted visit to a brothel he is too scared to consummate. Sure the kid is a sap and a 'mother's boy' but why did Gilbert try the role? Gilbert plays the kid very callow, naive, and unhand some (Gilbert is clean shaved and so very unhand some) and he is no catch. When he panics after killing the boss he runs away and hides in the ghost house. The moody light effects are very effective as he cowers in the shadows, his white handkerchief fluttering like a ghost. When his mother comes with the police in tow he cowers in her arms like a little boy. Not heroic but his fingers patting and stroking her sleeve are tiny touching details.
Gilbert plays the part of the kid very well (even if it is not a sexy, swaggering part) and it is to his credit he tries this part at all. He does not make the boy brave and ends the film only a little wiser and much sadder. You wonder what will happen to the mother's boy next. He does not seem promising. The movie offers no happy ending or promise of a future happy ending. So you are left to wonder.
The writer director based it on a book so he was limited. He should have made the prologue of the boy and girl from opposite sides of the tracks the same two grown ups seen later. That would have been more effective. But apparently the book does not say that even if the film would have been more effective if liberties had been taken.
Ignore the title and give the film a chance and be surprised. I think (despite the bad quality of the print and pasted on can music) you will like it.
J E F Rose
