Silent Revue: UNDERWORLD (1927)

Name: Silent Revue: UNDERWORLD (1927)
Start: 2025-01-26T16:00:00-05:00
Location: Revue Cinema

Schedule

Sun, 26 Jan, 2025 at 04:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Revue Cinema | Toronto, ON

An urtext for all crime films and film noirs to come, UNDWERWORLD is an early Josef von Sternberg masterpiece. Featuring the sultry Evelyn Brent as the unflappable mob moll, “Feathers” McCoy, it established von Sternberg’s ability to harness supreme feminine powers and prepared him for his discovery of Marlene Dietrich a short time later.

With an Oscar-winning screenplay penned by Ben Hecht, UNDERWORLD established the gangster genre and all its iconography – as well as the trope of fantastically named gangsters and affiliates. Beyond Brent’s “Feathers,” we have George Bancroft as kingpin “Bull” W**d and Clive Brook as his new righthand “Rolls Royce” Wensel as they attempt to defend their Chicago territory from “Buck” Mulligan (Fred Kohler). Hecht, formerly a Chicago crime reported based the screenplay on real-life escaped convict “Terrible” Tommy O’Connor—a mafia henchman who escaped prison days before his execution and was never apprehended. Despite its studio refusing to promote it, UNDERWORLD was a box office phenomenon ushering it round-the-clock screenings at New York’s Paramount Theatre.

Live accompaniment by Tania Gill

Silent Revue is curated by Alicia Fletcher and is sponsored by Hollywood Suite