Kind of a historical curiosity. Here it is, 1929, and it's a talkie. The microphones were hidden in bouquets and under lapels. The noisy camera was hidden within a sound-resistant "blimp." On those many occasions when people weren't walking or dashing around, they stood in staged groups facing the camera, as if for a wedding photograph.
And the truth is they didn't need to dart around that often. The story rests with the dialog, which, without too much in the way of perspiration or creative frenzy, could have been a radio play.
Barbara Stanwyck's character is young, pretty, vulnerable, and innocent, and she is talked into accompanying the womanizing cad, Rod La Roque (his real name, more or less) onto an offshore ship where liquor can be served legally -- this being Prohibition and all. The ship drifts within territorial boundaries and Stanwyck is arrested and her reputation stained.
Hiding this scurrilous incident, she manages to marry an older and very wealthy man, William "Stage" Boyd, and she lives with him and his sister, Betty Bronson, in their mansion.
But, lo. Rod La Roque shows up again, this time trying to seduce Stanwyck's young sister-in-law, Bronson. Both Stanwyck and La Roque remember that night from eighteen months earlier but neither lets on in front of the others.
I don't want to make this exposition too long so -- an abbreviated version would simply say that La Roque makes a date with Bronson in his hotel room, but Boyd, having discovered what a cad La Roque is, shows up first and shoots him by accident. He leaves. But Stanwyck had shown up first and hidden upstairs. Then the cops arrive and Stanwyck's tryst with La Roque is uncovered. Then Betty Bronson shows up. Then Zasu Pitts, the hotel switchboard operator who has overheard the shooting, is brought in -- and, trust me, she is a DEAD RINGER for Betty Bronson. It would require a DNA EXPERT to tell one from the other.
La Roque lives long enough to tell the true story and absorb whatever blame is to be distributed. Everyone goes home happy, except for La Roque, of course, who is completely dead.
The film generates a certain amount of suspense and pity, but not much of either. But it's pleasant to think of a time in history when a woman's reputation could be ruined by her having been swept out to a ship that served liquor. Kind of nostalgic, like those cloche hats the ladies wear or the caviar and champagne that the rich could afford. There is no directorial stamp worth noticing and the plot, as I say, seems to come from the radio plays that were becoming popular at the time. A curious artifact, this movie, like a cuckoo clock.
And the truth is they didn't need to dart around that often. The story rests with the dialog, which, without too much in the way of perspiration or creative frenzy, could have been a radio play.
Barbara Stanwyck's character is young, pretty, vulnerable, and innocent, and she is talked into accompanying the womanizing cad, Rod La Roque (his real name, more or less) onto an offshore ship where liquor can be served legally -- this being Prohibition and all. The ship drifts within territorial boundaries and Stanwyck is arrested and her reputation stained.
Hiding this scurrilous incident, she manages to marry an older and very wealthy man, William "Stage" Boyd, and she lives with him and his sister, Betty Bronson, in their mansion.
But, lo. Rod La Roque shows up again, this time trying to seduce Stanwyck's young sister-in-law, Bronson. Both Stanwyck and La Roque remember that night from eighteen months earlier but neither lets on in front of the others.
I don't want to make this exposition too long so -- an abbreviated version would simply say that La Roque makes a date with Bronson in his hotel room, but Boyd, having discovered what a cad La Roque is, shows up first and shoots him by accident. He leaves. But Stanwyck had shown up first and hidden upstairs. Then the cops arrive and Stanwyck's tryst with La Roque is uncovered. Then Betty Bronson shows up. Then Zasu Pitts, the hotel switchboard operator who has overheard the shooting, is brought in -- and, trust me, she is a DEAD RINGER for Betty Bronson. It would require a DNA EXPERT to tell one from the other.
La Roque lives long enough to tell the true story and absorb whatever blame is to be distributed. Everyone goes home happy, except for La Roque, of course, who is completely dead.
The film generates a certain amount of suspense and pity, but not much of either. But it's pleasant to think of a time in history when a woman's reputation could be ruined by her having been swept out to a ship that served liquor. Kind of nostalgic, like those cloche hats the ladies wear or the caviar and champagne that the rich could afford. There is no directorial stamp worth noticing and the plot, as I say, seems to come from the radio plays that were becoming popular at the time. A curious artifact, this movie, like a cuckoo clock.