As others have noted, though this is marketed at "Pre-Code" there is little here to suggest that the censors would have had an issue. A spoiled, rich girl sets her sights on a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and does whatever it takes to get him. And get him she does, but he eventually rebels and she finds she can't keep him with her money any longer, and must find another way.
I had hoped the ending would give the film more of a pre-code kick, but unfortunately it wasn't there. I found the first two-thirds or more of the film stronger than the last third. In that first section, Dorothy Mackaill as the rich girl, Joel McCrea as the boy, and Robert McWade as the girl's father were the outstanding performances. They had depth and ease in their characters. Most of the others were flatly written -- Mary Carr as the boy's mom was sugary sweet, Ned Sparks as the Carr's border was there for comic relief, and a pack of shrewish women led by Florence Roberts as the girl's mother were all painfully overplayed for me. "Just get them off the screen!" I kept thinking.
But as I said, even the strong performances didn't sustain themselves throughout the film, with the one exception of McWade as the girl's father. His character remained his believable self throughout the film, and though he participated in spoiling his daughter, you always felt he did so because he truly loved his daughter, rather than trying to win her affection through money. At the last, you truly felt that even without all his riches as the owner of a steel mill, he could walk away and there would still be something of the man left at the end. There was still something more to the man outside of what we saw in this film. The other characters never achieved that feeling.
This is a film I'm glad I saw, but one which I would not say I had to have in my collection.
I had hoped the ending would give the film more of a pre-code kick, but unfortunately it wasn't there. I found the first two-thirds or more of the film stronger than the last third. In that first section, Dorothy Mackaill as the rich girl, Joel McCrea as the boy, and Robert McWade as the girl's father were the outstanding performances. They had depth and ease in their characters. Most of the others were flatly written -- Mary Carr as the boy's mom was sugary sweet, Ned Sparks as the Carr's border was there for comic relief, and a pack of shrewish women led by Florence Roberts as the girl's mother were all painfully overplayed for me. "Just get them off the screen!" I kept thinking.
But as I said, even the strong performances didn't sustain themselves throughout the film, with the one exception of McWade as the girl's father. His character remained his believable self throughout the film, and though he participated in spoiling his daughter, you always felt he did so because he truly loved his daughter, rather than trying to win her affection through money. At the last, you truly felt that even without all his riches as the owner of a steel mill, he could walk away and there would still be something of the man left at the end. There was still something more to the man outside of what we saw in this film. The other characters never achieved that feeling.
This is a film I'm glad I saw, but one which I would not say I had to have in my collection.