I'm going to be honest and admit that while watching this early talkie, I suffered from a New Year's hangover and probably missed a few details. But as a total amateur unschooled in film history, my first reaction to it is that I would imagine it would be very rich to write about. It's liminal, standing between silent and talking pictures; and it's unusual, being shot in New York by a French director. This film belongs to Claudette Colbert, who gives a confident performance even though this is only one of her first onscreen; both she and Edward G Robinson come across as relatively mature performers in an embryonic art form. The story goes that Colbert, recently released from prison, wants to kidnap the granddaughter of a wealthy woman who had her framed for theft to get her out of her house and away from her son's attention. Colbert implicates herself in Robinson's fake psychic racket, hiding out as Madame Mystera until a newspaper man sniffs out the truth behind the kidnapping.
The sets and props have an expressionistic flair, and several scenes drift dreamily into silence and pantomime. The actors demonstrate a few wildly rhetorical stances from the silent era (or stage performances), but words are spoken very naturally. Colbert especially has some touchingly realistic exchanges with the child actor Marcia Kagno. And the little nightclub scene below is so lovely: in it, Robinson confesses he loves Colbert but is rejected, and the emotions are revealed mainly in the interplay of the actors' hands.
Once again, the antagonists are privileged individuals who tread over the rights of ordinary people, their wealth allowing them to use the law to their advantage. I wonder where this trope has gone to in American movies!
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