Love or Justice

This film may not have the most flowing story line but it is an interesting view of life in the 1917 American city.

We get a view of the criminal underworld, the city legal system struggling to deal with it, and fashions that were beginning to head in the direction of the 1920s flappers.

Criminals do their "slumming" and scheming at the Dolphin night club in a Spartan atmosphere with talented black jazz musicians. Later in the court room scenes, there appears to be more overblown grandstanding, than cogent legal arguments being made. I'm not sure how realistic these two depictions are but at least they are visions from a 1917 film maker's perspective.

The women's fashions were an interesting transition between old lady temperance outfits and oversized flapper dresses (ie. A flapper dress shaped like a tent rather than a pencil). Their hats were puffy or odd-shaped rather than the tighter caps from the 1920s.

The print that I saw was a restoration by the George Eastman Museum. They did an excellent job as it was mostly clear and detailed but there was significant nitrate deterioration in several spots that made for difficult viewing. I recommend visiting the George Eastman Museum if you are ever near Rochester, NY.

The other review here by Bob Lipton does a great job setting up the story and assessing the plot. Be sure to read that review too.

Louise Glaum is a tough egg, a leading light of the underworld. Charles Gunn -- he would die the following year of the Spanish Influenza -- is a lawyer, brought low by drug addiction. Glaum calls him a weakling, and helps him get the monkey off his back. He offers her marriage, but she's contemptuous of society's norms, so it's off to respectable society and the District Attorney's office. Yet Miss Glaum realizes she has changed too, so she quits the rackets, gets a respectable job, and pushes away her old associates. One of them decides to frame her, and in the attempt, he winds up dead... and Gunn is ordered to prosecute her, and get a conviction, lest the entire office lose their jobs.

It's a potboiler from Thomas Ince Productions, with a script by Lambert Hillyer - he would turn director the following month -- and there's a lot of high-flown language in the titles, and hand-waving as to procedure. Still, there's a nice perverse set of motives here: Gunn believes her innocent, and she knows he'll lose his job.... so who will look out for their own interests?