Stolen Heaven

This is absolutely dripping in atmosphere and oozing with the authentic feel of the big bad city as The Depression took hold. Besides having a great engaging story, it just looks so good - a real time machine movie.

This could only have been made in the early thirties. Made at any other time, the story would have sounded completely ridiculous but made when it was, it accurately reflects the mindset of those desperate years. During that time, the expression: "Let's spend all this stolen money, let's live like kings for a while and then kill ourselves" bizarrely was a perfectly feasible attitude to have.

Obviously Nancy Carroll is faultless in this but poor old Phillips Holmes got quite a bit of criticism for this: Why didn't they use a rougher tougher actor to play "a desperado"? He's far too placid and bland to be taken seriously. When he says: They'll never take me alive! He's so unconvincing, he's such an unlikely villain. ..... But that's exactly why he's perfect in this role! He's a normal, mild-mannered middling sort doing a middling sort of job. People like this were exactly the ones who suffered and the ones who could often see no other way to survive than to behave completely out of character.

It's estimated that the majority of Americans in the early thirties saw the banks and businesses as the enemies of the people. The police were seen as paid thugs working for those evil entities, not a service to serve or help or even to maintain law and order. It would not have been too unusual for someone like Phillips Holmes' character to cross that very fuzzy boundary. This was a different alien world!

Although written and directed by a Broadway guy rather than a pictures guy, this is as removed from a static, stagey theatre production as you can imagine. It seems that not only was George Abbot a top theatre impresario but knew how to make pictures better than a lot of established directors. Watching a picture made in 1930 is often a really awful experience because so many directors hadn't figured out how to make talkies by then but not George Abbot. This is a beautifully fluid and dynamic visual and auditory treat. Besides making his characters alive and genuine, he really captures the contrast between the haves and have-nots.