boblipton

): It's another day in New York City and another woman is found murdered in her apartment. She's pretty, so it makes the headlines. Meanwhile, police Lieutenant Barry Fitzgerald and his squad of detectives begin to gather the scattered threads that will lead them to the killer and a dramatic shoot-out on the Williamburg Bridge.

Universal didn't want to release this movie. They didn't know how to market it. But their contract with producer Mark Hellinger required them to. It turned into a solid hit. The public was tiring of stylized film noir, and the neo-realism of this, its tired, procedural pace, and startling array of stolen shots of real locations helped. So did a solid cast of professionals and canny casting of soon-to-be familiar faces in tiny roles, like Paul Ford, and once famous players like Enid Markey. For me, though, it was looking at the City twenty years before I knew it, yet instantly familiar, filled with shots of Rechter's Deli, and a street with a horse-drawn cart followed by a rickshaw, bare playgrounds filled with children, luxury apartments and bare tenements, tennis players seen through the girders of a bridge, and a woman selling conical paper cups of ice-cold root beer for a nickel.

Maureen O'Sullivan is a rich young lady, thanks to her dead father. He took care of people. She just spends the money. The chickens are coming home to roost. Not only do her rich friends tell her off. She wanders off in an alcoholic haze, and gets picked up with a switched purse. She's booked for 30 days and makes a fuss at first. But Betty Compson, is also in for 30 days, covering up for the mother of a child who has been badly injured in one of Miss O'Sullivan's neglected tenements. When attorney John Warburton shows up to talk to Miss Compson, Miss O'Sullivan does everything but growl like a cat in heat. And he likes her too. At least he likes the woman he sees. He has some unkind remarks about the owner of slum buildings.

The copy I looked at was in terrible condition, but it's an interesting movie for the cast and the director.. That's James Cruze, once a major player. However self-indulgence had hit him hard, and the talkies were rough going for his particular mix of urban realism and sentimentality. His slide was not abrupt, and he bumped along with a few successes as his opportunities wilted. Here he can still manage a good cast, an excellent crew including cinematographer Robert Planck -- not that I could see much beyond the shape of his fine group compositions -- and distribution through United Artists.

Bologna is a fellow who lives in Barcelona and loves a pretty senorita. She, however, will love none but a man who has defeated a bull in the ring. Bologna takes a correspondence course in bull-fighting. It recommends making friends with a retired bull. Our hero -- so to speak -- does so. But the bull he befriends is not to be trusted.

This was written, produced, directed, and so forth by Joseph Sunn. He was an early worker in claymation, and the juvenile sense of humor revealed in the titles makes sure we all know that. Three of his films are known of, and they all survive. This was the third.