They've got the right idea, but the resulting product is quite disappointing. It's a very depressing pre-code drama about two unwed couples encountering each other one fateful night and how their crossed paths bring four very different people together. This affects the more well off pair of Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins who begin to examine their own privilege as they see the human suffering they can't relate to.
When the film opens, the audience realizes that college professor March is involved with Hopkins, one of his students, and he wants to leave the teaching profession to go into the road to find out what else is out there. They go to a speakeasy where they encounter ex-con George Raft and his pregnant girlfriend, Helen Mack. Hopkins' purse is snatched, Raft ends up in prison, March goes on by himself while Hopkins goes back with mother Nella Walker, and Mack ends up in what is essentially a prison for unwed mothers to be. She's great in a role that seems to have been planned for Sylvia Sidney.
While March disappears about half way through the film, Hopkins grows up a lot and visits both Mack and Raft, helping Raft escape. It's a disgusting exploration of phoniness as home for unwed mothers director Blanche Friderici acts all phony when Hopkins visits. She's not as vicious as prison matrons of other movies are, but she's genuinely wretched, and Friderici is unapologetic in showing her hypocrisy.
Mack and Raft play characters better developed in character than March and Hopkins, although Hopkins does get a lot of really good material and is convincing with what she does with it. The problem is that there's so many ideals attached to this and there isn't enough time to really develop it to the point that makes the audience fully vested.
When the film opens, the audience realizes that college professor March is involved with Hopkins, one of his students, and he wants to leave the teaching profession to go into the road to find out what else is out there. They go to a speakeasy where they encounter ex-con George Raft and his pregnant girlfriend, Helen Mack. Hopkins' purse is snatched, Raft ends up in prison, March goes on by himself while Hopkins goes back with mother Nella Walker, and Mack ends up in what is essentially a prison for unwed mothers to be. She's great in a role that seems to have been planned for Sylvia Sidney.
While March disappears about half way through the film, Hopkins grows up a lot and visits both Mack and Raft, helping Raft escape. It's a disgusting exploration of phoniness as home for unwed mothers director Blanche Friderici acts all phony when Hopkins visits. She's not as vicious as prison matrons of other movies are, but she's genuinely wretched, and Friderici is unapologetic in showing her hypocrisy.
Mack and Raft play characters better developed in character than March and Hopkins, although Hopkins does get a lot of really good material and is convincing with what she does with it. The problem is that there's so many ideals attached to this and there isn't enough time to really develop it to the point that makes the audience fully vested.