Prosecutor Fredric March has convicted Alison Skipworth of various crimes and she is imprisoned. What to do about her daughter, Nancy Carroll? In the ordinary course events, she would be declared a minor without a guardian and sent to a juvenile reformatory. Under the infuence of his mother, Katherine Emmet, March has her sent to a charity hospital for training. She hates it. He visits her there, to see how she is getting along. She hates him. He keeps going back to see her. When her mother is released from prison, she runs away, back to her mother. March goes to see how she is getting along. Ex-carnival strongman Alan Hale dopes his drink. Nancy takes him to a safe house and tends him until he sobers up. Then in comes Hale, who is so angry with her that he proceeds to beat her. March arises and they struggle.
Edmund Goulding wrote and directed this movie, a straight dramatic role for Miss Carroll; except for one short scene in which she is giving testimony in court, she is a twitchy creature; in court she is magnificent. Everyone is very good in this melodramatic effort, shot in a moody, impressionistic style.
I think the issue with Miss Carroll's performance falls into two parts. She was not a strong dramatic actress, but someone more adept at light, musical-comedy parts. The other is that Goulding was, by reputation, one of those directors who showed each actor precisely how to play a part. Stronger actors like March, Mrs. Skipworth and even Hale, could fight him and make the roles their own. Miss Carroll could not.
The movie is of an Erda, a woman who drags a moral man to his doom, like Louise Brooks in PANDORA'S BOX or Marlene Dietrich in THE BLUE ANGEL. Miss Carroll here plays an unwitting, unwilling Erda, a role meant to grant her the audience's sympathy. She makes a good effort at it, but she is simply not up to the demands of the role in this otherwise noble experiment that almost works, in part because of her miscasting, in part because of what looks like a studio-mandated happy ending.
