"I want to watch a Kay Francis picture" is not something many people would say. There's usually no point, most of her output were samey sentimental, melodramas made to cheer up 1930s women. This one however is great. It's still a sentimental melodrama but is a lot more rip-roaring and rollicking than you might expect.
It's that familiar old story: boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy sells girl into prostitution, girl meets alcoholic carrying a bag of poison....the usual stuff. An on-line definition of melodrama could just link to this film. Like Spinal Tap's amp, everything in this is set at level 11: as the story progresses, the characters become ever more exaggerated - almost caricatures of real people but the acting is so good you can actually believe that real people are like this. This isn't something I'd say too often but Kay Francis is brilliant in this film. She begins as a sweet, innocent young girl but within no more than a couple of weeks, she's not just the ultimate femme-fatale, vicious and sharp-tongued but the town's most infamous high-class prostitute. A couple of years later we see her as a sad and forlorn young woman mournful for the loss of herself and searching for some sort of redemption. Kay Francis achieves these impossible transformations so well that you really believe that this could all actually happen.
To compliment the absurdity of the characters (Ricardo Cortez is also great - he must have had fun doing this), the plot itself takes a massive detour away from reality. As daft as it all gets, you don't question it, you go along with this nonsense and it's not until it's all over that you wonder why you were so engaged with it. The reason for that is because it's directed with such gusto and passion by Michael Curtiz. He doesn't give you any time to rest or sit back and think about what's happening - he injects a real sense of urgency which keeps you on the edge of your seat. He does exactly what a filmmaker's job is: he makes the unbelievable believable. He also makes this movie look great - you start to feel claustrophobic as that hot and heavy sticky air of Rangoon surrounds you. There's a lot more care gone into this than was typical for Warner Brothers, every frame seems to have been carefully planned out. It a very professional, well made emotionally stirring story.
It's that familiar old story: boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, boy sells girl into prostitution, girl meets alcoholic carrying a bag of poison....the usual stuff. An on-line definition of melodrama could just link to this film. Like Spinal Tap's amp, everything in this is set at level 11: as the story progresses, the characters become ever more exaggerated - almost caricatures of real people but the acting is so good you can actually believe that real people are like this. This isn't something I'd say too often but Kay Francis is brilliant in this film. She begins as a sweet, innocent young girl but within no more than a couple of weeks, she's not just the ultimate femme-fatale, vicious and sharp-tongued but the town's most infamous high-class prostitute. A couple of years later we see her as a sad and forlorn young woman mournful for the loss of herself and searching for some sort of redemption. Kay Francis achieves these impossible transformations so well that you really believe that this could all actually happen.
To compliment the absurdity of the characters (Ricardo Cortez is also great - he must have had fun doing this), the plot itself takes a massive detour away from reality. As daft as it all gets, you don't question it, you go along with this nonsense and it's not until it's all over that you wonder why you were so engaged with it. The reason for that is because it's directed with such gusto and passion by Michael Curtiz. He doesn't give you any time to rest or sit back and think about what's happening - he injects a real sense of urgency which keeps you on the edge of your seat. He does exactly what a filmmaker's job is: he makes the unbelievable believable. He also makes this movie look great - you start to feel claustrophobic as that hot and heavy sticky air of Rangoon surrounds you. There's a lot more care gone into this than was typical for Warner Brothers, every frame seems to have been carefully planned out. It a very professional, well made emotionally stirring story.