After the dawn of sound, Warner Bros. wandered through the early-talkie wilderness trying their hand at Technicolor musicals and revues that largely did not work out. Around 1930 they changed their output to be what we think of when we think about the Warner Bros. of the 1930's - gritty Depression era films that pulled no punches in depicting the hardships of those days. Here Richard Barthelemess is Tom Holmes. Tom's life is a metaphor for just about every social injustice from 1917 through 1933 you can pack into a 70-plus minute film. Through his life we visit the post-war hardships of WWI doughboys including morphine addiction, the double-edged sword of automation, the Red scares and hysteria of the 1920's, and finally the armies of unemployed Depression-era men treated as lepers as they wandered from town to town in search of non-existent jobs.
It's an interesting picture of a bleak world populated with largely unlikable characters such as the socialist who becomes a capitalist as soon as he becomes wealthy and the soldier that stole a wartime honor from Tom only to return home and not stand up for him when Tom really needs him. You do have to overcome some obvious problems in logic to enjoy this film. For one, nobody is as long-suffering as Tom Holmes is in this film, having so much adversity unjustly piled on him and still at heart an optimist. However, the film is a great political precode, and one whose script would not have been possible even a year later with its explicit sarcasm about the American social and economic order.
