Simply A Masterpiece

Awesome Movie

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

Though produced by Warner Bros. at the dawn of the 1930s, this women's prison picture is not much of a social issue drama. Ladies They Talk About (1933) often feels more like a dark comedy than anything else. Barbara Stanwyck plays a tough-talking bank robber who falls for a crusading religious man. He falls for her too, but her past doesn't stop him from having her tossed into the slammer for five years.The plot and love story are mostly bunk. The highlights of the film are the examination of life inside the prison, the way all of these women interact. Unfortunately, the film is marred by unpleasant racial stereotyping and an ending which does not ring true. Stankwyck fans and lovers of pre-code will dig this though.

Part of a bank robber gang, a woman is sent to prison, while carrying on a tepid romance with an evangelist.Stanwyck (Nan) is nearly the whole show in this early crime drama from street-wise Warner Bros. She's one tough cookie, and when she struts cocksure into a room full of other tough prison cookies, we believe it. No wonder she had one of Hollywood's most durable A-picture careers. But watch out for that dimpled cutie Lillian Roth (Linda) who almost steals the film with a big helping of winsome charm. The prison tour she makes with a silent Stanwyck is clearly intended to showcase that dimpled appeal. Too bad she had such a problem with booze; in my book, she could have been a big star, especially in musicals.The movie itself is just okay. Unfortunately, the supposed romance between Stanwyck and a simpering Preston Foster undercuts much of the movie's stab at realism. But then I guess someone had to set Nan on the straight and narrow. Clearly, the best scenes are in prison. There we see an unusual line-up of characters, thanks to the pre-Code period. These include such exotic types as the one-and-only Maude Eburne (Aunt Maggie) as a wacko grandmother from heck, a cigar-smoking butch matron (Dickson) whose daring type would disappear from the screen for decades, and even an "uppity" black woman (uncredited) who takes no lip from anyone, black or white. Still, it's Stanwyck's movie, and there's enough of her trademark grit to please her many fans, myself included.

This is a very gritty pre-coder made special by Stanwyck. She could take an ordinary programmer and with a couple of emotional scenes make it very memorable. The "Ladies They Talk About" are the women prisoners in San Quentin, where a lot of the action takes place.After putting the police on a false trail ("Police, hurry please - there's a man running wild with a butcher's knife stabbing people") Nan Taylor (Barbara Stanwyck) gets busy with the real business - helping to rob a bank with her gang!!! It goes wrong and Nan is caught. "Fighting" Dave Slade (Preston Foster), a reform revivalist, takes an interest in her - he remembers her from his home town, she was the deacon's daughter!!! She convinces Dave that she is innocent, so he has her paroled - hoping she will go straight. She confesses that she was in on that bank robbery, thinking that her honestly will impress him but it doesn't and she is sent to jail.Life on the inside looks rough but Linda (Lillian Roth) takes her under her wing. Lillian Roth looks absolutely beautiful and even sings a song - "If I Could Be With You". This was one of her last films before her alcoholic oblivion. Someone Nan needs to be careful of is "Sister" Susie (Dorothy Burgess) a religious zealot, who is secretly in love with Dave Slade and will not hear anything against him. Meanwhile Don (Lyle Talbot) and some of his gang, have been imprisoned but they have plans to break out with Nan's help. She provides a plan of the women's section and also an impression of the master key to all the cells. She sends the details in a letter, but because "Lefty" (her "outside" contact) is now in jail her letter is intercepted by the warden and the guards swoop. The gang members are killed in an ambush and Nan wrongly believes Dave Slade was responsible. When she is released she goes "gunning" for him.The ending is pretty improbable - somehow I don't think Nan and Dave are going to live "happily ever after"!!! She is completely hard boiled and only starts to feel sympathy for him when she almost kills him. Even when she is asked if it is true that she and Slade are to be married, Nan replies "well, he said so, didn't he!!"Among the cast is John Hyams, Leila's father, as an uncredited bank manager. Ruth Donnelly is the Matron with the cockatoo and Madame Sul- Te-Wan is Mustard - she had appeared in "Hoodoo Ann" as Black Cindy.Recommended.

Barbara Stanwyck as a beautiful gun moll who helps her gang commit an armed bank robbery, then gets herself arrested. A young reformer who speaks in front of an "old-fashioned revival" believes in her innocence and tries to help her as they both are from the same hometown and, well, she's not past using her looks to get what she wants. But when, for some reason that I couldn't quite figure out, she actually admits to him she was part of the hold-up, he then assists in sending her to San Quentin. Soon our gal is the "new fish" in prison, and this is a women's prison like no other - if it weren't for the appearance of some older women prisoners in the mix, this would almost look a private girl's school rather than the state Penn! Lounge rocking chairs, newspapers, card games, a "greenhouse" area, a hair stylist, manicures, the "ladies bird club", phonograph record players, and outside - "the sun yard", a regular garden spot. These women can wear their own slinky negligees at night and play records in their room - and one older inmate actually is allowed to keep her own little "lap dog" - h'm.This film is pretty good - the portrayal of the prison so far-fetched it's actually kind of a hoot to watch. I notice the male prisoners (on the other side of the prison) don't seem to have the same conditions as the women as they are shown in regular jail cells with bars. Anyway, Barbara Stanwyck, one of my favorite actresses from that era, gives her usual star performance and acts up a storm - just great as she plays the world-wise gal who'll play hard ball to get what she wants. A really fun film.