What a wacky little gem from cult filmmaker Rowland Brown. He got this one in just under the wire. The next year 1934 would see an all-out effort to "clean up the movies", and for the next 30 years audiences would get twin beds, closed-mouth kissing, and no hint of a human vagary that couldn't be shoe-horned into Jack Webb- style law and order or Rock meets Doris type romance.
None of that predictable conventionality here. Instead, it's an unapologetic look at a layer of urban life soon to be shoved back into the Legion of Decency's dark closet. Macho bail bondsman George Bancroft works the shady side of the law, dabbling at times in stolen property. Nothing too unusual there. But watch him caress thief Chick Chandler's shoulder even after the latter has moved in on Bancroft's girl, or laugh uproariously at a "sissy" remark thrown his way. He may end up with the bordello madam, but it looks like the law is not the only both-sides-of-the-street he works.
Then there's sweet-faced ingénue Frances Dee as the rich girl on-the-make. But it's not Cary Grant or Ralph Bellamy she's hankering for. It's the load of masochistic pain that makes her eyes go all shiny and her voice all quavery. The problem is she can't decide whether it's the brawny thrills of a masterful man or the hip-swiveling charms of a hula girl that attracts her more. There's also the erotic sideline of lifting meaningless articles from downtown stores that sort of fills the day-to-day gaps, to say nothing of a sense of loyalty that sort of comes and goes. She may look like one of those madcap heiresses of the thirties, but the reality is far more Freudian and provocative.
And what other movie would dare make a sympathetic sex object out of that hawk-nosed paradigm of female villainy Judith Anderson. Apparently, it was her first film before the gargoyle type-casting that would later take hold. Meanwhile, the slinky gowns and plunging neck-lines are surprisingly effective, even if the facial profile is not exactly that of the classic Hollywood beauty. It's a measure of Brown's humanity, I take it, that her character as a bordello madam comes across as the movie's most sympathetic.
Mix these characters into what amounts to an urban inferno and you get a genuine piece of Hollywood exotica, to say nothing of the monocled cross-dresser who dates Chick Chandler's nervy thief, the same guy who hires on not one professional girl for the evening, but two (one of which is an early Lucille Ball). Note too, how easily the shady Bancroft mixes in with the respectable types. First it's an insurance executive, then a shipping magnate, and most conveniently, the city DA, as overworld and underworld blend into a single shape-shifting shade of gray.
It's that margin of ambiguity, not only between the sexes, but between the social classes and the law that lies, I believe, at the movie's core. The fluid nature of things is made more apparent by the fact that Brown remains non-judgmental throughout. His characters simply are as they are. Dee is made no less deserving of happiness than anyone else. And in one of the strangest of all Hollywood endings, where Bancroft and Anderson at last find true love, Dee goes gleefully off to another expected masochistic romp, unpunished. Love and lust both triumph here, with no moral distinction drawn at fade-out. And when Bancroft is made to remark that liberals acknowledge human vice and try to control it, whereas conservatives simply turn their backs on its existence, that sounds like Brown speaking. Certainly, he was no conservative in that respect. Hollywood, however, would unfortunately turn their backs on selected reality for the next thirty years, as Brown's all-too-brief career underscores. Too bad. For as the movie shows in its own unorthodox way, his loss was our loss too.
None of that predictable conventionality here. Instead, it's an unapologetic look at a layer of urban life soon to be shoved back into the Legion of Decency's dark closet. Macho bail bondsman George Bancroft works the shady side of the law, dabbling at times in stolen property. Nothing too unusual there. But watch him caress thief Chick Chandler's shoulder even after the latter has moved in on Bancroft's girl, or laugh uproariously at a "sissy" remark thrown his way. He may end up with the bordello madam, but it looks like the law is not the only both-sides-of-the-street he works.
Then there's sweet-faced ingénue Frances Dee as the rich girl on-the-make. But it's not Cary Grant or Ralph Bellamy she's hankering for. It's the load of masochistic pain that makes her eyes go all shiny and her voice all quavery. The problem is she can't decide whether it's the brawny thrills of a masterful man or the hip-swiveling charms of a hula girl that attracts her more. There's also the erotic sideline of lifting meaningless articles from downtown stores that sort of fills the day-to-day gaps, to say nothing of a sense of loyalty that sort of comes and goes. She may look like one of those madcap heiresses of the thirties, but the reality is far more Freudian and provocative.
And what other movie would dare make a sympathetic sex object out of that hawk-nosed paradigm of female villainy Judith Anderson. Apparently, it was her first film before the gargoyle type-casting that would later take hold. Meanwhile, the slinky gowns and plunging neck-lines are surprisingly effective, even if the facial profile is not exactly that of the classic Hollywood beauty. It's a measure of Brown's humanity, I take it, that her character as a bordello madam comes across as the movie's most sympathetic.
Mix these characters into what amounts to an urban inferno and you get a genuine piece of Hollywood exotica, to say nothing of the monocled cross-dresser who dates Chick Chandler's nervy thief, the same guy who hires on not one professional girl for the evening, but two (one of which is an early Lucille Ball). Note too, how easily the shady Bancroft mixes in with the respectable types. First it's an insurance executive, then a shipping magnate, and most conveniently, the city DA, as overworld and underworld blend into a single shape-shifting shade of gray.
It's that margin of ambiguity, not only between the sexes, but between the social classes and the law that lies, I believe, at the movie's core. The fluid nature of things is made more apparent by the fact that Brown remains non-judgmental throughout. His characters simply are as they are. Dee is made no less deserving of happiness than anyone else. And in one of the strangest of all Hollywood endings, where Bancroft and Anderson at last find true love, Dee goes gleefully off to another expected masochistic romp, unpunished. Love and lust both triumph here, with no moral distinction drawn at fade-out. And when Bancroft is made to remark that liberals acknowledge human vice and try to control it, whereas conservatives simply turn their backs on its existence, that sounds like Brown speaking. Certainly, he was no conservative in that respect. Hollywood, however, would unfortunately turn their backs on selected reality for the next thirty years, as Brown's all-too-brief career underscores. Too bad. For as the movie shows in its own unorthodox way, his loss was our loss too.