A Modern Hero

This is not a great film, but it has much to recommend it. With the great G.W. Pabst at the helm, there is much of visual interest, and with one of the best actors of his generation, Richard Barthelmess, in the lead role, there is much of dramatic interest too. Although both men were at their height in the silent era, they were both still great cinema artists in 1934.

In the Barthelmess films of the early 1930s, there was a tendency toward a kind of tragic masochism, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong for the Barthelmess character. And we see it here again. Twenty years later we'd see another great actor being attracted to such roles - Marlon Brando. But Pabst steers the character's suffering (perhaps a symbol for a rather innocent USA suffering through a terrible war and the great depression) toward enlightenment. And the ending is both profound and a little subversive politically.

All the supporting performances are excellent, but Marjorie Rambeau stands out as Barthelmess' mother. The film is also quite risque for its day - with Richard obviously sleeping with rich older women for money, and fathering a love child. Pabst was bringing a real European sensibility to American cinema here - something that would soon become impossible with the Hollywood production code. It's a shame that Hollywood lost such a great artist, and even sadder that he chose to work in Nazi Germany instead.