Illegal

My favorite year for movies is 1932, with consistently high quality from the major studios and so many classics, including my all-time favorite comedy "This Is the Night". What a treasure to find this Warner Brothers film made in England, an unsung little gem.

Isobel Elsom stars as a very sympathetic mother figure, her success and decline mirroring the wonderful formula of so many WB movies of the time, especially Edgar G. Robinson vehicles. The supporting performances are first-rate, especially Margot Grahame as the "bad daughter", belting out several songs wonderfully with direct-sound recording, Ivor Barnard perfect as the always loyal platonic friend throughout Isobel's travails, and a bit overshadowed, Moira Lynd as the good daughter.

The movie really packs a wallop in its final reel, as fate moves its huge hand and the plot twists are piled on fast and furiously by director Wiliam McGann -breathlessly leading to at least three exciting climaxes in succession. Like the famous 1929 talkie from Paramount of "The Letter" starring Jeanne Eagels, "Illegal" ends at a peak moment, no denouement or corny coda included - my favorite way to finish a movie!

It could mop the floor with most other films in this genre during the thirties. It's very much like an early version of "Mildred Pierce." Isabel Elsom is its Mildred: Life has dealt her a shoddy hand. So with the encouragement of a man who is her friend but not more she opens a club.

She wants only the best for her two daughters, though. And one of them is played by Margot Graham. And that daughter is the equivalent of Veda! She is trouble with a capital "T." Then there is Elsom's second husband, the girls' stepfather ...! Let's not even get into that. We don't want to give anything away.

It's an antique but it still packs a wallop. The acting is generally good to excellent (Graham and Elsom.) I think the original "Scarface," which came out around this same time, remains one of the most shocking movies every made. And this one, its own way -- and on its own terms -- is shocking too.

Much like "Striptease" (Demi Moore's film about a pole artist who must hide her true occupation to retain custody after a messy divorce), "Illegal" is about a mother who turns to running a gambling house in order to be able to afford to raise her children properly from a distance. But there are no clear signals from writers or director as to whether this was an ultimately wise choice, and so the moral message -- let alone the underlying sense of the plot -- remains largely ambiguous on the screen. The main character has a heart of gold, so why must she suffer her partial tragedy?

There is also a rather flawed construction in the execution of the film: The last three or four scenes are perfunctory to the point of denying a proper catharsis with the characters, for whom you wouldn't mind rooting a bit more. One is left with the impression, for instance, that the younger daughter's relationship with the gentleman is nothing more than a piece of good luck. The concluding scene, while perfectly satisfactory in its own way, could have been enhanced with more searching, meaning-of-life-type dialog.

In sum, a promising story, but too summarily dispatched.

I suppose it's barely possible that some people were moved by this tedious little "quota quickie" in 1932, but it's got precious little to recommend it these days. After kicking her wastrel husband out of the house, a woman decides to raise her two daughters to be respectable young ladies by running an illegal - and profitable - gambling house. It's not clear, at least to me, what the two girls were told when they asked why their mother was out of the house every night until after midnight, but that's only one of the many plot holes in this film. The acting isn't up to much, either - especially Moira Lynd, who plays the younger daughter, and who leaves a hole in the screen every time she appears - but then the hackneyed script and clumsy direction don't give the actors an awful lot to work with. There also seems to be some footage missing in the last couple of minutes, which results in abrupt edits and an unseemly rush to the finale.

The classic story of rise and fall with all the family tragedy and misunderstandings happening to the woman of the night. The story itself seemed to be a heavily censored version so there's nothing much to censor in the actual film which is probably one of the reasons this doesn't work much. It just doesn't know how to treat this story in a good enough way to make it authentic and entertaining and loses every aspect in the process of making it work. But it does do a lot of things right for the time considering how early this is for sound cinema. It's a trainwreck that has some niceties throughout.