Nobody would argue that 1929 was a year of classic movies. Amongst the flotsam and jetsam however there's APPLAUSE and a few other good ones..... and this as well - almost. What a difference a top director and screenwriter can make!
This isn't a gangster film, it's an intelligently written character study and in-depth look into the mind of a mobster. You find writer Jules Furthman's name on virtually every other classic Hollywood picture of the 20s, 30s and 40s. His style was quality and his skill was creating believable engaging stories with real genuine characters. His story was further adapted by H Mankiewicz - who wrote the scripts for the probably the other half of the classics from this period. Needless to say - this is well written with fascinating and deeply faceted characters.
Josef von Sternberg directed this which by the look of it was his fiftieth talkie. Surely it's impossible that this was his first sound film? Being made in 1929, it's still a little experimental, not quite everything works so this is not one of his best pictures. Nevertheless he creates a brooding almost surreal atmosphere with real tension. That style intensifies significantly in the latter part of the film on death row which has an almost dream like feel about it.
The story is tense, the characters are believable, the production is innovative but this is not a perfect film. To enable clear sound recording, some but not all of the actors speak very slowly which sounds especially weird when the actor they're talking with is speaking normally. Actors had their own individual vocal coaches then with different techniques thus the inconsistency and maybe not being a native English speaker, von Sternberg probably didn't notice the subtle differences.
As great a director as he was, von Sternberg was given the impossible task of trying to make Fay Wray seem like a proper actress. Not even he could do that and predictably she's absolutely dreadful. As always she just projects that limp, whining and insipid expression to convey whatever emotion she's trying to express.
Whether she's pretending to be a hard as nails gangster's moll or a reformed, sweet and vulnerable fragile young thing she's that same bland, shallow character. Not only can't she act but in this she doesn't appear to be able to speak English - what on earth is that accent! She's meant to be a girl from the streets so why is she doing history's worst impression of Queen Mary? That two men could be besotted with this dull sour-faced non-entity completely stretches all credibility.
