Betty Balfour follows up her enormous hit as the flower girl with a heat of gold and a will of iron with a muted fantasy for the proles. Squibs is getting along well with her boyfriend, Fred Groves, but there are problems. Her father, his bookie joint shut, is at loose ends. Her sister is married to a fellow with the daunting sobriquet of "The Weasel". The Weasel kills a copper while committing a burglary and he and the missus flee to Paris. Meanwhile, Betty's dad has presented her with a sweepstakes ticket, and if you don't know how that will turn out, you haven't read the move's title.
Miss Balfour is a delight as Squbbs; she's young, energetic, and it's easy to see why the audiences loved her and the role. I saw the attempt to make a talkie version of the earlier movie with Miss Balfour a year ago, but the inertness of the camera and the fact that Miss Balfour was clearly ten years older weighed it down.
I was surprised by the lively direction and great compositions of George Pearson. Most of my acquaintance with his work is from his mid-1930s quota quickies, which possesses neither. It can't have been purely a matter of budgets. What happened to his career?
