The strength of this one is the way the camera tells the story -- beautifully. The film justifies the artistry often claimed for silent films. The weakness of the film is the story itself. It starts out like "A Place in the Sun" (George Stevens' great film of 1951), with an ambitious young man loved by a lower class woman and an aristocrat. Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy,'on which the Stevens film was based was published in the year of 'Woman of the Night' (1925). But the film becomes conventional, when Molly decides that Chunky will at least be a lot of laughs. The fact that the two women do look alike, in spite of the makeup and garish costumes that Norma's Molly wears, is not exploited. The "double story" a la 'Dorian Gray,' 'Jeykll and Hyde,' Poe's 'William Wilson,' Dostoyevski's 'The Double,' James' 'Jolly Corner,' and Conrad's 'The Duel' is not told, so there's no point in having Shearer play both women. In fact, Joan Crawford, who must have just changed her name from Lucille LeSueur, plays Molly when the two women are on screen. I wonder how Crawford felt later, when Shearer got all the parts that Thalberg bought for her during the early days of talkies. Crawford told us when she commented on Shearer and Howard in the 1936 'Romeo and Juliet': "I couldn't wait for those two old turkeys to die -- could you?"
Review of Lady of the Night
