Une femme survint

The lead role of a German wrestler (Wallace Beery) in this film is far too dopey for my taste, both in the character and the performance. This leads to some really lame humor especially in the first half of the film, e.g. slopping beer around, banging through a door instead of unlocking it, and accidentally breaking an egg. Karen Morley plays the woman with a past that he naively takes in, and things get a little more interesting when her lover (Ricardo Cortez) shows up. Morley almost always impresses me, and the scenes with just the two of them crackle with the tough banter of 1932, making me wish that they had somehow been more of the focus. As it is, the film tries to do too many things, finally settling on being a wrestling film, and doesn't do anything particularly well. How painfully funny that William Faulkner is listed as one of the three screenwriters, though that gives it yet another link to Barton Fink, which I guess gives it some interest.

As for direction, I found no sign of John Ford visually or tonally here; literally anyone else could have directed this listless melodrama and we would not have noticed the difference, which might explain him trying to remove his credit from the film. Don't get too perked up over the salacious title (and its associated poster) either; it's just a pre-Code attempt to get customers into the theater, and refers not to sex but the wrestler being referred to as a "big hunk of flesh" in passing. Anyway, with a more nuanced, less childlike character this really could have been something, between the love triangle and the organized crime element trying to fix fights, but it's too silly and mildly annoying as it is.