Silence

They're building the gallows in the gloom of the prison. A priest comes and asks a grey-haired Clive Brook for his final confession. In a Cockney voice, he tells his story. Twenty years ago, he got out of prison, hoping to marry Peggy Shannon, who was carrying his child. He was too late. Willard Robertson had just married her, and was taking her away.

Twenty years go by, and he is running a shell game at a county fair. A girl came up and bets ten dollars. It is his daughter (also played by Miss Shannon). Robertson is now a wealthy man, respected, a banker and a newspaper publisher. This Miss Shannon was about to be married. His confederate, John Wray, knows that Brook has kept letters from the girl's mother. Despite Brook's protests, and the insistence that they're leaving, he steals the papers....

Clive Brook had quite a career, on the stage and in the silent and now talking pictures, stretching from 1920 to 1944. He almost invariably played a middle or upper-class gentleman To see him here, aged and speaking like a spiv is a shock, but merely shows what a fine actor he is, and his performance is very powerful in this pre-code movie. Other performances are good, particularly John Wray as his drug-addled confederate. Brook, though, is surprisingly different, showing his range