Variety (1928):
Another
underworlder, well done....Gilbert, as Benny Horowitz, gangster, product of
an East Side environment, plays with repression and conviction. Miss Crawford
as his round-heeled frail is splendid...Nigh's direction deserves commendation
for its reality, restraint and knowledge of his elements.
George Gerhard
in the New York Evening World (1928):
Miss
Crawford simply walks off with it. Not that Gilbert is very far behind her.
He isn't. He gives a competent performance, just as he always does. But the
story gives an infinitely better opportunity to Miss Crawford than to him....[The
picture] will go a long way toward lifting Miss Crawford to a point nearer the
top in Hollywood circles, a point toward which she has been rapidly climbing
in the last year or two.
Photoplay
(1928):
For
getting down to earth with the practical sort of love-making that folks like,
our hat is off to John Gilbert and Joan Crawford. John certainly takes that
girl in hand, and boy, how she loves to be taken!
Mordaunt
Hall
in the New
York Times
(August 20, 1928)
Of all the gunmen who have made a smiling bow from the screen, none
has been dressed in better taste than is John Gilbert as Benny
Horowitz, gang leader and ex-convict in the film adaptation of the
play, "Four Walls." Mr. Horowitz is so careful regarding the cut of his
clothes, the selection of his necktie, the spotlessness of his linen
and the combing of his hair that one would never imagine him to be a
killer living on Manhattan's east side, but rather a broker with an
apartment on Park Avenue. But whether or no Mr. Gilbert looks the part,
he gives a capital performance of the man who during a prison term
learns to dread the confines of a cell's four walls.
This narrative has not been especially well filmed, for there are
stretches of close-ups and spoken titles which are quite tedious. The
first chapter, however, and one or two others are quite effective.
Here there is that ubiquitous specimen of a detective who appears so
often to be able to see without being seen. During one of the closing
sequences this sleuth listens at a door and overhears the truth and is
thus able to help out in the happy ending by telling the suspects that
they have "come clean." As one is apt to give Benny and Frieda credit
for some slight intelligence, it would seem that these two would have
discussed the death of Monk in a voice so low that the sleuth would not
have been able to hear. Some of the more alert denizens of the
underworld might even have gone to the door to see whether the
detective was really on his way downstairs.
All gunmen have their girls, and Benny is no exception. Frieda,
played by Joan Crawford, knows of all the lives Benny has snuffed out.
When Benny emerges from jail he hears that Monk, his lieutenant, has
won favor in Frieda's eyes. Benny, whose old Jewish mother harks back
to the days of his confirmation in the synagogue, is rather relieved.
He relishes the idea of freedom and refuses to renew his leadership of
the gang. Frieda, however, pursues Benny, and for some reason or other
Benny finds himself at the headquarters of the gang, and when Monk
falls to his death from the roof of a building, both Frieda and Benny
are suspected. Bertha, the plain girl of the story, who is devoted to
Benny, helps out Benny in his alibi and in the end it is presumed that
Benny and Frieda steer clear of crime.
Miss Sawyer gives a creditable showing as Frieda. Carmel Myers is
rastrained and believable as the unattractive Bertha. Vera Gordon is
competent as Benny's mother.
|
MGM silent. 60 minutes
(6 reels).
