Mr. Morris, the owner of a large metropolitan department store, gives jobs to paroled ex-convicts in an effort to help them reform and go straight. Among his 'employed-prison-graduates' are Helen Roberts and Joe Dennis, working as sales clerks. Joe is in love with Helen and asks her to marry him, but she is forbidden to marry as she is still on parole, but she says yes and they are married. In spite of their poverty-level life, their marriage is a happy one until Joe discovers she has lied about her past, in order to marry him. Disillusioned, he leaves, goes back to his old gang and plans to rob the department store.
Direction
Lang treats the musical numbers like crime scenes—tense, shadowy, wrong.
Acting
Sylvia Sidney's eyes could shatter glass; she sells the impossible premise.
Writing
Kurt Weill's numbers feel like a brick through a window.
Director
Fritz Lang
Sylvia Sidney
Helen Roberts
George Raft
Joe Dennis
Barton MacLane
Mickey
Harry Carey
Mr. Morris
Roscoe Karns
Cuffy
George E. Stone
Pasty
Warren Hymer
Gimpy Carter
Robert Cummings
Jim
Adrian Morris
Knucks
Cecil Cunningham
Mrs. Morris
Vera Gordon
Mrs. Levine
Egon Brecher
Mr. Levine
Willard Robertson
Dayton
Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams
Taxi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lang fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and spent his Hollywood years genre-hopping desperately; this musical experiment was his attempt to prove versatility while the studio system squeezed him dry.
Kurt Weill composed the score fresh off 'The Threepenny Opera' exile, making this the only Hollywood collaboration between two German émigrés who'd conquered Berlin before Hitler scattered them.
No ratings yet
Sign in to join the discussion — comments are spoiler-gated to your watch progress.
Discussion starters
US
