This is one of those movies you see in a poor print and decide it deserves it. It can be classed as a PreCode, since it shows a lot of lascivious behavior, with just a fig leaf to cover it -- a rolling title that says this is a very bad thing, and we should try to do something about it -- even though that behavior, and lots of bare limbs is the only reason why anyone would want to see it.
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is the son of a moral glass manufacturer and is engaged to marry good-girl secretary Jeanette Loff. When he goes to a wild party, he blacks out. On awakening, he is told by Judith Barne that he has to do right by her. He does.
It's a sloppily performed movie; director Victor Halperin, not the most distinguished of auteurs had his name replaced by a pseudonym on its re-issue. The visuals are pretty good, although there is a bizarre montage near the end; however, the line readings are stagey and unbelievable; Fairbanks, Marie Prevost and others had appeared in earlier talkie pictures and been better than this. Clearly Halperin was incompetent for the task.
It's not the PreCode elements that make this a bad movie; there are plenty of movies of the era that are even more vicious and great movies. It's simply that this one offers nothing but people behaving badly, its culotte of morality without demands or consequence, without any care in the technical issues of performance, that make this one terrible.
Bob
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is the son of a moral glass manufacturer and is engaged to marry good-girl secretary Jeanette Loff. When he goes to a wild party, he blacks out. On awakening, he is told by Judith Barne that he has to do right by her. He does.
It's a sloppily performed movie; director Victor Halperin, not the most distinguished of auteurs had his name replaced by a pseudonym on its re-issue. The visuals are pretty good, although there is a bizarre montage near the end; however, the line readings are stagey and unbelievable; Fairbanks, Marie Prevost and others had appeared in earlier talkie pictures and been better than this. Clearly Halperin was incompetent for the task.
It's not the PreCode elements that make this a bad movie; there are plenty of movies of the era that are even more vicious and great movies. It's simply that this one offers nothing but people behaving badly, its culotte of morality without demands or consequence, without any care in the technical issues of performance, that make this one terrible.
Bob