Paul Lukas refuses Vice Squad Rockcliffe Fellowes to name the lady he was with -- the ambassador's wife, who has run down and killed the officer who tried to arrest her. Fellowes offers him a choice: accessory to murder, or work with him as a "stool pigeon", trapping girls for .... well, they call it "vagrancy" in the movie. A couple of years later, he's still at it, drinking his meals. Whn he rescues Judith Wood, who's been living in Greenwich Village as an aspiring writer, she returns the favor by nursing him during a session of the DTs. A cople of days later, he's sent to her apartment, but on the way out he tells Fellowes the truth: there's no morals charge involved. Fellowes arrests her anyway.
It's a serious social problem movie, with titles that speak to this sort of police misconduct. Despite the lack of anything particularly prurient on screen, it marks itself as a serious Pre-Code; while the Warner Brothers Studio would show the gangsters having a grand time shooting up the sets, or Demille would give the audience a wild party, this one makes it a personal story, well acted by Lukas, torn between Miss Wood and his former fiancee, Kay Francis, who offers him a return to respectability, but warns him that if he disgraces himself by testifying in court, she will drop him back into the gutter.
Because of the lack of excitement and Lukas' low-affect depression, I found it to be an earnest but not particularly cinematic effort.
