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City "of enchantment, of delirium," New York, never more so than in actualités of the Brooklyn Bridge before a smoky cityscape at dawn. (The documentary aspect promptly and marvelously clashes with the illusionism of miniatures as the family barge is slammed by a passing freighter.) On the run from hoodlums as soon as he comes ashore, the solitary survivor (George O'Brien) finds sanctuary in the Jewish ghetto with a tailor's daughter (Virginia Valli). An overgrown foundling who blushes profusely at bloomers on a drying rack, he marks time as a boxer ("Whatcha got in them paws of yours—sandbags?") but dreams of being a builder, the brick in the palm of his hand dissolves to a skyscraping vision. His leap into architecture is toasted by the tycoon who's secretly his father (Holmes Herbert) but lamented by the prizefighting manager (J. Farrell MacDonald): "Ruinin' a champ to make a lousy engineer!" In the year of Sunrise and Metropolis, a panorama of destiny with a vertical dimension to enhance the horizontal sprawl of the title. Allan Dwan steers the impressionism away from the mythical with bright gagwork: A fluid reverse track is bestowed upon a guttersnipe staggering away from a scuffle after getting conked on the head, elsewhere the ringside opponent slips into a punch-drunk reverie with fantasy nymphs while on the ropes. Ritzy penthouses and subterranean constructions, in between them the speakeasy where the sharpie (Frank Allworth) shrugs at the heroine's modesty ("I've seen the female form so much I'd rather look at a horse"). Real Lindberghs and ersatz Titanics, the go-getter who must construct himself before he raises the tower, "back to th' river" or upwards and onwards. The closing shots give unmistakable rise to Vidor's The Fountainhead. With June Collyer, Dore Davidson, John Miltern, and Dan Wolheim. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |