Although he would later disparage Underworld, the great success of Sternberg’s first solo project at Paramount made him one of the studio’s most important directors and helped launch the gangster genre. Working for the first time at a major Hollywood studio, Sternberg exploited his mastery at visual texture, conjuring extravagant effects of light and shadow, translucence and opacity, while casting a lustrous and loaded halo around Feathers, the moll who is the lynchpin in a cruel love triangle with George Bancroft’s mobster heavy and an alcoholic former lawyer. Sternberg’s characteristic emphasis on decadent milieu and forceful emotion at the expense of narrative frustrated crime reporter-turned-scenarist Ben Hecht, who tried to remove his name from the credits.

Live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin.