Submitted by: Charles O'Brien on April 21, 2007 using Classic tool
Charles O'Brien’s comment: The first all-talking feature from Warner Bros./Vitaphone. Some scenes are underscored (romantic/melodramatic scenes with the young couple, as well as the tense barbershop murder scene at end) and some not (scenes centered on the gangsters). 0.00: "This is a story of Main Street and Broadway ..." (intertitle); radio plays a ragtime/jazz tune in a hotel room, where big-city gangsters Dan and Jake plot to lure small-town barbers Eddie and Gene into working for them in NY; 2.10: Gene (Eugene Palette) and Eddie Morgan are met by the gangsters; 5.25: naive Eddie coaxes his mother into lending him money; 9.00: "Broadway--45 miles from Main Street, but a million miles away" (title); exterior, street at night, bootleg murder; 11.20: barber shop interior, Eddie and Gene complain about their job working as a front for a bootleg operation; Eddie leaves the shot to meet up with girlfriend Kitty; 14.20: "Central Park" (title); Eddie meets Kitty on park bench, gives her a gun to protect herself; 16.45: new spaces and characters introduced via expository intertitles: "The Night Hawk"; "Hank Miller--owner of the the Night Hawk"; "Molly Thompson--Hank's Girl"; etc.; a dance troupe, "the Dancing Pirates," featuring Kitty, performs; a singer (who is this guy?) performs a jazz-ragtime tune "The morning glories tell their stories..." (is this the same tune heard on the radio during the film's opening scene; it also perhaps recurs as background music in a later scene in the club); 22.55: "The Hawk's Office"; Hank and his henchmen plan to frame Eddie for the bootleg murder; Molly warns Hank to stay away from Kitty; detectives visit Hank in his office; 41.00: "eight minutes to ten" (title); Hank shows up at the barber shop, looking for Eddie; 48.50: "Kitty waits in her apartment" (title); Hank is shot dead in barber shop by an unseen gunman, and Eddie is blamed; Molly confesses to killing Hank with Kitty's gun, thus exonerating Eddie and Kitty, who are advised by police detective to leave Broadway immediately and return to the country. The end.