This is a shocking and horrible story of a most ordinary and honest factory worker who gets bypassed in promotion and can't get over his humiliation. Opportunity brings him into contact with a Ku Klux Klan-like racist secret society, in which he gets caught in a dwindling vicious circle of constantly worse incrimination. The film is a glaring warning, it is over-obvious in its message, but it is well done, it is shockingly realistic, it does convince you that this is how a secret society of that kind works, and you can't get into deeper trouble than getting stuck in such claws. The question here and the worry of the audience is nor however there could be an obligatory happy ending to this mess, the concern is rather obviously the degree of how bad it will end.
Humphrey Bogart makes an unforgettable performance though, his anguish in the end is on par with a Shakespeare tragedy performance, and he was here only in the beginning of his career. He is a type of his own, he is always himself in all his films, and yet that character he develops every time into new idiosyncracies - although he is always the same he is always new. And here he is young and fresh and almost even handsome - to begin with.
Humphrey Bogart makes an unforgettable performance though, his anguish in the end is on par with a Shakespeare tragedy performance, and he was here only in the beginning of his career. He is a type of his own, he is always himself in all his films, and yet that character he develops every time into new idiosyncracies - although he is always the same he is always new. And here he is young and fresh and almost even handsome - to begin with.