This is a quite unpleasant picture which paints the newspaper industry in a particularly bad light. Joan Blondell plays a character different to the usual bubbly screen persona we're used to. Along with Pat O'Brien, she's a gutter journalist working at a muck-raking scandal rag ruining people's lives without any cares.
If you've seen Mervyn LeRoy's excellent FIVE STAR FINAL made in 1931 this will make you a little depressed. That film was a scathing attack on the disgusting and disreputable practices of the gutter press but six years later it looks like its message was ignored. It's not just the fact that nothing seems to have changed, this picture presents its protagonists as nice, fun-loving regular guys and even tries to inject some elements of comedy. There's no condemnation of these unpleasant people, they don't change, they're the same scumbags at the end as they are at the beginning. The unfunny comedy relief doesn't help - it actually feels quite out of place and a little disrespectful.
After destroying someone's life, Joan Blondell's character does try to make amends but not because she thinks it's the right thing to do, she does this just to make herself feel better about herself. She and Pat O'Brien do put in what feel like authentic performances which does let you engage with them - although you don't really want to.
It's a reasonably well made picture but there's an undercurrent of sourness to this.
If you've seen Mervyn LeRoy's excellent FIVE STAR FINAL made in 1931 this will make you a little depressed. That film was a scathing attack on the disgusting and disreputable practices of the gutter press but six years later it looks like its message was ignored. It's not just the fact that nothing seems to have changed, this picture presents its protagonists as nice, fun-loving regular guys and even tries to inject some elements of comedy. There's no condemnation of these unpleasant people, they don't change, they're the same scumbags at the end as they are at the beginning. The unfunny comedy relief doesn't help - it actually feels quite out of place and a little disrespectful.
After destroying someone's life, Joan Blondell's character does try to make amends but not because she thinks it's the right thing to do, she does this just to make herself feel better about herself. She and Pat O'Brien do put in what feel like authentic performances which does let you engage with them - although you don't really want to.
It's a reasonably well made picture but there's an undercurrent of sourness to this.