A crippled man finds a boy and vows to make him a great dancer.A crippled man finds a boy and vows to make him a great dancer.A crippled man finds a boy and vows to make him a great dancer.
Vladimar Ivan Tsarakov: I will create my own being: that boy! That boy will be my counterpart, he shall be what I should have been... I will mold him, I will pour into him my genius, my soul. In him all my dreams, all my ambitions will be fulfilled -- the greatest dancer of all time!
Curtiz is a very underrated director who made many outstanding films for Warners. He was stereotyped as a director who made only one good film -- Casablanca. His direction (and Grot's set design and the costumes) really are the stars here. Barrymore is great; Woods shows why he never really became a star; Marsh is OK. Only drawback: very abrupt, ,kind of out-of-nowhere ending