What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Never Look Back from 1952 with Rosamund John, Guy Middleton and Hugh Sinclair


Most movie plots fall apart under too much scrutiny, just some more than others.

Never Look Back, a short English legal drama from famed Hammer Films, completely crumbles if you think too hard about its plot, but if you don't, outstanding acting, a bunch of fun j'accuse! courtroom moments and a potential scandal carries this one comfortably over the finish line.

Rosamund John, adorable in a reserved English way, plays a rising-star barrister in the insanely confusing to anyone not English, British justice system. She is a before-her-time woman who puts her career ahead of marriage.

As the movie opens, we see John spending an evening celebrating her latest career achievement with her pining-to-marry-her boyfriend and fellow lawyer, played by Hugh Sinclair.

When she's at home later that same evening, a former boyfriend, played by Guy Middleton, shows up at John's apartment telling a fishy tale about a fight he had with his current girlfriend.

With no place to go to sleep that evening, John, generously and at risk to her reputation (different times), lets him stay on her sofa for the night. After he leaves in the morning, things quickly go very wrong for John.

Middleton's girlfriend was murdered that same night leaving John as Middleton's alibia, but to take on that role, she'd have to admit to him having stayed over, which would ruin her reputation, both personally and professionally.

Instead and at his insistence, and against her colleagues' advice, she agrees to represent him in court. Amping up the drama, boyfriend Sinclair, the man whose marriage proposals she keeps rejecting, will be the state's prosecutor on the case.

Effectively, a brilliant female barrister did a kind thing for an old boyfriend and now has to put her career at risk to save it, in a move that has everyone who knows her, especially her current boyfriend, confused and opposed to her decision.

Things only get worse for John, but better for the story, when the action moves to the courtroom.

English law is generally recognizable to Americans (American law is, after all, based on English law), but there's more pomp, wigs and baleful tones to England's variety, which makes English courtroom dramas that much more fun.

Director Francis Searle and the writing team sacrificed proper legal procedure (several surprise witnesses pop up with little challenge from the opposition) to heighten the drama. It works as each surprise threatens, with the movie racing to a climax, to expose John's secret.

Never Look Back is carried over its plot holes, and it has several, by the talented acting of its cast. John is wonderful as a formerly in-control woman seemingly powerless to stop her life from slowly imploding in a few short weeks.

Middleton is equally good as the slimy ex-boyfriend who proves to be nastier and smarter than he first appears. Sinclair, too, delivers an engaging performance as the lovelorn man rejected by a career woman.

Movies like Never Look Back can't be made today because we no longer care who sleeps with whom, in or out of marriage. Well, we care, it's always fun gossip, but that news doesn't wreck careers anymore.

Today, though, one out-of-step politically incorrect comment can kill a career, but that has a bitter and spiteful Salem-witch-trials feel to it; whereas, the old "reputation" risk, rightly or wrongly, had a long historically established set of rules that were simply accepted (until they weren't).

Never Look Back is just an off-the-shelf English courtroom drama, but its seventy-three minutes speeds by as the story is engaging (if you don't think too hard about the plot), the acting talented and the directing fast paced.

Plus, for us today, there's almost a charm to everybody getting so worked up over an unmarried man and an unmarried woman having, possibly, spent the night together.

 

[AmateisGal]

Alfred Hitchcock's superb Strangers on a Train.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^Highsmith's first book and scooped out the bag by Alfred H.
Loved Carole the fim version of The Price of Salt.

 

[Fading Fast]

Strictly Dynamite from 1934 with Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Norman Foster, Marian Nixon and Eugene Pallette


It is hard to know what RKO studios was trying to do with Strictly Dynamite, an odd Jimmy Durante vehicle, as Durante gets top billing, but the movie is equally Norman Foster's as the struggling highbrow writer whose wife, played by Marian Nixon, gets him a job writing gags for Durante's character Moxie Straight.

The plot, for what it's worth, has Foster initially upset that he's "sold out," but he soon becomes Broadway's "new genius writer." Moxie's girlfriend, played by Lupe Velez, then comes on to Foster as she wants to switch horses mid race thinking Foster's star is rising faster than Durante's.

Plot-wise, the rest of the movie is Durante beginning to see that Velez is stepping out on him while, at the same time, Foster's loyal wife's feelings get hurt. There's also a bunch of exaggerated contract negotiations where Foster's agent, played by William Gargan, tricks Durante into paying Foster too much money.

The climax (no spoilers coming) is too crazy to take seriously, in part because, as happens in these fast-and-loose comedies, all the resolutions come too easily and too quickly.

You don't, though, watch Strictly Dynamite for its not-serious plot; you watch it for the antics of Durante and Velez and its general screwballness where characters like Nixon and Foster play the role of straight man to all the crazy going on around them.

Durante, in this one, is a self absorbed comedian looking to "class up" his act with highbrow material. The gag of course is that no force in the universe could ever "class up" Durante.

He's also supposed to be so in love with Velez that he can't see that she's cheating on him. This latter gag plays too much against Durante's cynical-toward-women brand to really work.

There are also a bunch of "skits" and "oddball" characters mixed in including Durante's two goofy bodyguards who couldn't even protect themselves in a fight and character actor Eugene Pallette who pops up as a hack cowboy singer looking for a joke writer.

Finally, another huge character actor of the era, Sterling Holloway, is in a few scenes as the whiny telephone repairman who, unbelievably, plays the voice of reason.

Strictly Dynamite is almost like Vaudeville in a movie as it's really just a series of silly comedy sketches, with some singing and many pratfalls tossed in, all held together by a not-important plot.

You either like Durante's version of slapstick, Catskill and screwball comedy - which many did in the 1930s - or this one won't work for you at all.


N.B. God bless the precode movie for its generally fun attitude toward sex that avoids the visual crudeness and political anger of today's movieland take on sex. Casually thrown into a scene in Strictly Dynamite (blink and you'll miss it) is an aside where Velez rebuts a man's criticism of her with the following line, which she delivers with a provocative shaking of her hips: "You [sic] just jealous because I never gave you a tumble."

 

[Worf]

Comedy Double Feature "DeadPool" and "Venom". I've seen the former twice now and had never seen Venom before. DeadPool holds up well even after multiple viewings, don't know about Venom. Not exactly "Casablanca" or the Marx Brothers but good mindless entertainment during the winter that doesn't want to leave! Snow predicted here on Saturday... sigh...

Worf

 

[Edward]

Comedy Double Feature "DeadPool" and "Venom". I've seen the former twice now and had never seen Venom before. DeadPool holds up well even after multiple viewings, don't know about Venom. Not exactly "Casablanca" or the Marx Brothers but good mindless entertainment during the winter that doesn't want to leave! Snow predicted here on Saturday... sigh...

Worf

I'm still holding out for Deadpool 2 on the streamers.... Unfortunately there's a lot of stuff from 2019 onwards that still languishes in Bezos' "Pay us more!" category....

 

[LizzieMaine]

View attachment 502738
Strictly Dynamite from 1934 with Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Norman Foster, Marian Nixon and Eugene Pallette


It is hard to know what RKO studios was trying to do with Strictly Dynamite, an odd Jimmy Durante vehicle, as Durante gets top billing, but the movie is equally Norman Foster's as the struggling highbrow writer whose wife, played by Marian Nixon, gets him a job writing gags for Durante's character Moxie Straight.

The plot, for what it's worth, has Foster initially upset that he's "sold out," but he soon becomes Broadway's "new genius writer." Moxie's girlfriend, played by Lupe Velez, then comes on to Foster as she wants to switch horses mid race thinking Foster's star is rising faster than Durante's.

Plot-wise, the rest of the movie is Durante beginning to see that Velez is stepping out on him while, at the same time, Foster's loyal wife's feelings get hurt. There's also a bunch of exaggerated contract negotiations where Foster's agent, played by William Gargan, tricks Durante into paying Foster too much money.

The climax (no spoilers coming) is too crazy to take seriously, in part because, as happens in these fast-and-loose comedies, all the resolutions come too easily and too quickly.

You don't, though, watch Strictly Dynamite for its not-serious plot; you watch it for the antics of Durante and Velez and its general screwballness where characters like Nixon and Foster play the role of straight man to all the crazy going on around them.

Durante, in this one, is a self absorbed comedian looking to "class up" his act with highbrow material. The gag of course is that no force in the universe could ever "class up" Durante.

He's also supposed to be so in love with Velez that he can't see that she's cheating on him. This latter gag plays too much against Durante's cynical-toward-women brand to really work.

There are also a bunch of "skits" and "oddball" characters mixed in including Durante's two goofy bodyguards who couldn't even protect themselves in a fight and character actor Eugene Pallette who pops up as a hack cowboy singer looking for a joke writer.

Finally, another huge character actor of the era, Sterling Holloway, is in a few scenes as the whiny telephone repairman who, unbelievably, plays the voice of reason.

Strictly Dynamite is almost like Vaudeville in a movie as it's really just a series of silly comedy sketches, with some singing and many pratfalls tossed in, all held together by a not-important plot.

You either like Durante's version of slapstick, Catskill and screwball comedy - which many did in the 1930s - or this one won't work for you at all.


N.B. God bless the precode movie for its generally fun attitude toward sex that avoids the visual crudeness and political anger of today's movieland take on sex. Casually thrown into a scene in Strictly Dynamite (blink and you'll miss it) is an aside where Velez rebuts a man's criticism of her with the following line, which she delivers with a provocative shaking of her hips: "You [sic] just jealous because I never gave you a tumble."

Hollywood tried for years, and never quite figured out what to do with Durante. But I do have to say pairing him with Lupe Velez is inspired -- certainly more so than MGM's attempt to team him with Buster Keaton. A man who never stopped talking paired with a man who carried his own silence.

 

[PatinaPen]

Watched "Fall".
Two young women climbing an abandoned 2000 foot radio tower find themselves trapped at the top.
Decent high concept genre movie. Sort of like what would happen if you took the statue of liberty scene in Hitchcock's Saboteur and made it into a feature film.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Artist from 2011 with Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo


The Artist is a charming homage to the end of the silent era of movies.

Shot in beautiful black and white, with a Golden Age Hollywood look and feel to its sets, costumes, architecture and style, this nearly all-silent film is captivating, sad and hopeful.

The Artist is that rare sui generis creation, a successful movie, that doesn't inspire imitation because it could only be done once.

Its brilliant idea and execution expanded, just for a moment and just for one film, the market for black and white silent movies in the twenty-first century, but oh what a moment.

The box-office receipts argue The Artist had broad appeal, but for the classic movie fan, it's as if the old silent-era studio system somehow made a movie in 2011. Echoes of The Jazz Singer, Fred and Ginger, Sunset Blvd., Citizen Kane and Singin' in the Rain are all here.

Handsome-in-a-1920s-movie-actor-way Jean Dujardin plays a major star of the silent era who, as many in Hollywood did at the time, believed talking pictures would be a passing fad.

They weren't and his refusal to act in a "talkie," along with his self-financed silent flop that was released just when talkies were taking off, sets his life on a downward cascade.

Pretty vivacious flapper-perfect Bérénice Bejo plays, as the wonderfully named Peppy Miller, the up-and-comer whose chance encounter with Dujardin, back when she was "a nobody," sets her on a path to Hollywood fame as the new young face of talking pictures.

Dujardin, whose Spanish-style mansion, chauffeur-driven limo, bored wife and extensive custom-tailored wardrobe is the epitome of 1920s Hollywood stardom, slowly loses everything over the course of a few years, except thankfully, his acting sidekick and loyal dog.

It's sad to see this once successful and happy man, who was a bit shallow and vain, but not obnoxiously so, have everything taken from him owing to advancing technology and an unwillingness to even try to adapt.

Bejo, conversely, rides Hollywood's up escalator as the embodiment of the new female film style, yet she doesn't forget her brief but fortuitous encounter with Dujardin. She tries to help him even going so far as buying his personal belongings at his bankruptcy sale.

Nothing, though, will stop Duardin from hitting bottom, while Bejo soars to the top, as the movie races to its dramatic and moving climax, which smartly leverages several elements of silent pictures, including the perfect use of a title card.

Director and writer Michel Hazanavicius knew exactly what he wanted to do with his movie as you become so engrossed in these two appealing characters and their overlapping but starkly diverging lives that you begin to forget you're watching a silent picture.

His movie is, also, simply beautiful to look at, yet it is a complete work because he understood how to show emotion, convey thought and advance a narrative in a silent film. That is the real throwback skill on display in The Artist.

Talking pictures are, yes, more realistic and allow for more complex storytelling, but Hazanavicius' homage to silent pictures reminds us, eight decades after the end of their era, that silent movies were, themselves, an impressive art form and not just "faces mugging for the camera."

Tucked inside is also a timeless "John Henry versus the steam engine" morality tale arguing that, while we can have sympathy for the man who honorably resists change, it is a path to heartbreak as technological progress will not stop for personal sentiment or will.

Hazanavicius' movie is a treat, a rare and truly creative gift from Hollywood that defends a part of Hollywood's past. A past which is often derided, if remembered at all today.

Notwithstanding its cool retro vibe, though, The Artist entertains the way every good movie ever entertains, by telling an engaging story about characters who become important to you.

 

[Edward]

View attachment 503503
The Artist from 2011 with Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo


The Artist is a charming homage to the end of the silent era of movies.

Shot in beautiful black and white, with a Golden Age Hollywood look and feel to its sets, costumes, architecture and style, this nearly all-silent film is captivating, sad and hopeful.

The Artist is that rare sui generis creation, a successful movie, that doesn't inspire imitation because it could only be done once.

Its brilliant idea and execution expanded, just for a moment and just for one film, the market for black and white silent movies in the twenty-first century, but oh what a moment.

The box-office receipts argue The Artist had broad appeal, but for the classic movie fan, it's as if the old silent-era studio system somehow made a movie in 2011. Echoes of The Jazz Singer, Fred and Ginger, Sunset Blvd., Citizen Kane and Singin' in the Rain are all here.

Handsome-in-a-1920s-movie-actor-way Jean Dujardin plays a major star of the silent era who, as many in Hollywood did at the time, believed talking pictures would be a passing fad.

They weren't and his refusal to act in a "talkie," along with his self-financed silent flop that was released just when talkies were taking off, sets his life on a downward cascade.

Pretty vivacious flapper-perfect Bérénice Bejo plays, as the wonderfully named Peppy Miller, the up-and-comer whose chance encounter with Dujardin, back when she was "a nobody," sets her on a path to Hollywood fame as the new young face of talking pictures.

Dujardin, whose Spanish-style mansion, chauffeur-driven limo, bored wife and extensive custom-tailored wardrobe is the epitome of 1920s Hollywood stardom, slowly loses everything over the course of a few years, except thankfully, his acting sidekick and loyal dog.

It's sad to see this once successful and happy man, who was a bit shallow and vain, but not obnoxiously so, have everything taken from him owing to advancing technology and an unwillingness to even try to adapt.

Bejo, conversely, rides Hollywood's up escalator as the embodiment of the new female film style, yet she doesn't forget her brief but fortuitous encounter with Dujardin. She tries to help him even going so far as buying his personal belongings at his bankruptcy sale.

Nothing, though, will stop Duardin from hitting bottom, while Bejo soars to the top, as the movie races to its dramatic and moving climax, which smartly leverages several elements of silent pictures, including the perfect use of a title card.

Director and writer Michel Hazanavicius knew exactly what he wanted to do with his movie as you become so engrossed in these two appealing characters and their overlapping but starkly diverging lives that you begin to forget you're watching a silent picture.

His movie is, also, simply beautiful to look at, yet it is a complete work because he understood how to show emotion, convey thought and advance a narrative in a silent film. That is the real throwback skill on display in The Artist.

Talking pictures are, yes, more realistic and allow for more complex storytelling, but Hazanavicius' homage to silent pictures reminds us, eight decades after the end of their era, that silent movies were, themselves, an impressive art form and not just "faces mugging for the camera."

Tucked inside is also a timeless "John Henry versus the steam engine" morality tale arguing that, while we can have sympathy for the man who honorably resists change, it is a path to heartbreak as technological progress will not stop for personal sentiment or will.

Hazanavicius' movie is a treat, a rare and truly creative gift from Hollywood that defends a part of Hollywood's past. A past which is often derided, if remembered at all today.

Notwithstanding its cool retro vibe, though, The Artist entertains the way every good movie ever entertains, by telling an engaging story about characters who become important to you.

View attachment 503504

I saw this in the cinema when it was released and enjoyed it very much. It also bears repeated viewings. One of the most fun was one New Year's Eve, maybe a decade ago, we went to see it in the Royal Albert Hall with the soundtrack performed by a live orchestra.

 

[Fading Fast]

I saw this in the cinema when it was released and enjoyed it very much. It also bears repeated viewings. One of the most fun was one New Year's Eve, maybe a decade ago, we went to see it in the Royal Albert Hall with the soundtrack performed by a live orchestra.

That must have been a great place and way to see it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

As a huge silent film fan/collector since the 1970s, I saw it theatrically the week it came out, then immediately got the DVD. I believe that we discussed it here in detail back then.

It's not exactly a great film, but as a labor-of-love salute to silent films, there's a lot to enjoy here. It's all done with tremendous authority and class, and all the actors are great, as are the sets and costumes. Did it deserve to win Best Picture? Of course not, but Hollywood can't ever resist honoring anything that celebrates its own history.



I have one minor complaint: during its will-he-kill-himself dramatic climax, it uses some of the score from Hitchcock's Vertigo rather than its own (very good) scoring. It's kind of a cheap shot, and as a major Bernard Herrmann fan who knows the Vertigo score well, it always pulls me right out of the story. But that's just me: probably hardly anyone else noticed.

 

[Edward]

As a huge silent film fan/collector since the 1970s, I saw it theatrically the week it came out, then immediately got the DVD. I believe that we discussed it here in detail back then.

It's not exactly a great film, but as a labor-of-love salute to silent films, there's a lot to enjoy here. It's all done with tremendous authority and class, and all the actors are great, as are the sets and costumes. Did it deserve to win Best Picture? Of course not, but Hollywood can't ever resist honoring anything that celebrates its own history.

View attachment 503601

I have one minor complaint: during its will-he-kill-himself dramatic climax, it uses some of the score from Hitchcock's Vertigo rather than its own (very good) scoring. It's kind of a cheap shot, and as a major Bernard Herrmann fan who knows the Vertigo score well, it always pulls me right out of the story. But that's just me: probably hardly anyone else noticed.

View attachment 503602

Nobody really should ever take the Oscars seriously - it's mostly them either rewarding something for being fashionable, or correcting the previous year's perceived mistakes by giving awards to someone they think really should have won them the year before for any old rubbish they just happen to have been in more recently.

 

[Edward]

That must have been a great place and way to see it.

It was indeed. Even better that it was early-mid evening on NYE, so most of the worst sort of potential audience member was otherwise engaged, and we still had time to get home and away from other people before all the nonsense at midnight.

 

[LizzieMaine]

This was one of the highest-grossing films we ever had here. It ran for three weeks, and it has a legacy yet -- the same week we opened it, we opened the show with this policy trailer, which, by popular demand, is still running eleven years later: vimeo.com/37981247

 

[Fading Fast]

This was one of the highest-grossing films we ever had here. It ran for three weeks, and it has a legacy yet -- the same week we opened it, we opened the show with this policy trailer, which, by popular demand, is still running eleven years later: vimeo.com/37981247

That's freakin' great.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Life of Jimmy Dolan from 1933 with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Aline MacMahon, Loretta Young and Guy Kibbee


Warner Bros. studio was one of the masters of the morally messy pre-code where real life, with all its grey areas, made it to the screen. While The Life of Jimmy Dolan is clunky in spots, its sweep is impressive, its morality is complex and its cast is incredibly talented.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays light heavyweight boxing champion Jimmy Dolan. Fairbanks as Dolan presents himself to the public as a clean-living and humble guy who fights, in part, to support his mother.

We quickly see, though, that he's a cynical manipulator of his public image as, in reality, he's an arrogant guy who lives a life of women, wine and song in private. Then it all comes apart when a guy he punches at a small and private party falls, hits his head and dies.

Owing to a series of events, the police believe Fairbanks was subsequently killed in a fiery car crash, but in reality, he wasn't in the car.

All of the police, save one dogged detective, played by perennial character actor Guy Kibbee, think the case is closed. Fairbanks, then, changes his name and "disappears" to a small farm out west.

The farm he wanders onto is run by a woman and her niece, played by Aline MacMahon and Loretta Young, respectively, who have taken in several somewhat (using a term of the day) crippled orphan children to give them a better life than they'd have in a state institution.

Arrogant Fairbanks, now living and working on the farm, has a slow conversion to decency as he sees the kindness of the women and the hopefulness of the children. He's helped along in his conversion by falling in love with pretty and compassionate Young.

The farm, though, has a mortgage payment coming that MacMahon and Young can't make, which forces Fairbanks to go back into the boxing ring, under a pseudonym, which could give the detective who never gave up on finding Fairbanks a clue to his whereabouts.

Will Fairbanks be successful in the ring and save the farm? Will the detective find and arrest Fairbanks, a man now happy to lead a moral and quiet life working on the farm and helping to raise the disabled kids with Young, eventually, as his wife?

Yes, the story is contrived (how many movies aren't?), but Fairbanks, Young, MacMahon, Kibbee and child stars Mickey Rooney, Anne Shirley and Allen Hoskins, plus several regulars from the Warners Bros. stable, have the acting talent to shepherd the story over its bumpy parts.

In the Depression, a tale of a formerly proud and rich man finding a fulfilling life working on a modest farm and helping to raise disabled children would resonate with an audience familiar with comedown and struggle.

As if that story wasn't enough, though, The Life of Jimmy Dolan throws a huge moral conundrum right in the middle as it asks the question of whether or not a man's genuine conversion to decency can erase his past sins?

Being a pre-code movie, the answer, which is left up in the air right until the end, doesn't have to meet a prescribed standard, but can wander into the grey areas of life, morality and justice.

This is exactly why these precode movies, like The Life of Jimmy Dolan, still have something meaningful to say to us today, as questions of morality are no easier now than they were back then.

 

[EngProf]

View attachment 504214
The Life of Jimmy Dolan from 1933 with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Aline MacMahon, Loretta Young and Guy Kibbee


Warner Bros. studio was one of the masters of the morally messy pre-code where real life, with all its grey areas, made it to the screen. While The Life of Jimmy Dolan is clunky in spots, its sweep is impressive, its morality is complex and its cast is incredibly talented.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays light heavyweight boxing champion Jimmy Dolan. Fairbanks as Dolan presents himself to the public as a clean-living and humble guy who fights, in part, to support his mother.

We quickly see, though, that he's a cynical manipulator of his public image as, in reality, he's an arrogant guy who lives a life of women, wine and song in private. Then it all comes apart when a guy he punches at a small and private party falls, hits his head and dies.

Owing to a series of events, the police believe Fairbanks was subsequently killed in a fiery car crash, but in reality, he wasn't in the car.

All of the police, save one dogged detective, played by perennial character actor Guy Kibbee, think the case is closed. Fairbanks, then, changes his name and "disappears" to a small farm out west.

The farm he wanders onto is run by a woman and her niece, played by Aline MacMahon and Loretta Young, respectively, who have taken in several somewhat (using a term of the day) crippled orphan children to give them a better life than they'd have in a state institution.

Arrogant Fairbanks, now living and working on the farm, has a slow conversion to decency as he sees the kindness of the women and the hopefulness of the children. He's helped along in his conversion by falling in love with pretty and compassionate Young.

The farm, though, has a mortgage payment coming that MacMahon and Young can't make, which forces Fairbanks to go back into the boxing ring, under a pseudonym, which could give the detective who never gave up on finding Fairbanks a clue to his whereabouts.

Will Fairbanks be successful in the ring and save the farm? Will the detective find and arrest Fairbanks, a man now happy to lead a moral and quiet life working on the farm and helping to raise the disabled kids with Young, eventually, as his wife?

Yes, the story is contrived (how many movies aren't?), but Fairbanks, Young, MacMahon, Kibbee and child stars Mickey Rooney, Anne Shirley and Allen Hoskins, plus several regulars from the Warners Bros. stable, have the acting talent to shepherd the story over its bumpy parts.

In the Depression, a tale of a formerly proud and rich man finding a fulfilling life working on a modest farm and helping to raise disabled children would resonate with an audience familiar with comedown and struggle.

As if that story wasn't enough, though, The Life of Jimmy Dolan throws a huge moral conundrum right in the middle as it asks the question of whether or not a man's genuine conversion to decency can erase his past sins?

Being a pre-code movie, the answer, which is left up in the air right until the end, doesn't have to meet a prescribed standard, but can wander into the grey areas of life, morality and justice.

This is exactly why these precode movies, like The Life of Jimmy Dolan, still have something meaningful to say to us today, as questions of morality are no easier now than they were back then.

That plot was so familiar that I had to look up "They Made Me a Criminal", which turned out to be a 1939 re-make of "Dolan", with John Garfield instead of Gable, and Ann Sheridan instead of Young.
The dogged detective in that one is Claude Rains. (Who is excellent...)
The "child stars" are the "Dead-end Kids".
If you decide to see that one, watch for one of Garfield's blonde floozies, Barbara Pepper, who later turned into Doris Ziffle (Arnold's mother) on "Green Acres".

 

[Granville]

"They Made Me a Criminal"

One of my favorites! Dolan was good, too, I saw it for the first time a month or two ago. To stay with Garfield, check out "Dust Be My Destiny" co-starring Priscilla Lane. Very episodic, as our hero and heroine are "on the run" and keep moving. Dead End Kids Billy Halop and Bobby Jordan are also featured. Great dialogue, too. Desperate, Garfield heads out to hold up a grocery/deli but, being an honest man at heart, he can't do it. Returning to the flea-bag hotel where a distraught Priscilla is waiting for him, he empties his pockets and shows her all they've got left is fifteen cents.
Hysterical and over-joyed that John didn't actually stick up the deli, Priscilla cries, "We're rich, Joe!" Garfield deadpans: "The dime's lead."

 

[AmateisGal]

A brand new movie to me - The Glass Wall (1953).

A displaced person from war-torn Europe stows away on a ship to America after WW2 in hopes of finding refuge, only to be turned away. He escapes in hopes of locating the American GI he helped in Europe. Really good.