The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) is that rare, unexpected film, even in the context of the tough pre-Code output that we have all always hoped to discover: a “social” film without the compromises of almost all the other films that start with fabulous promise. (Even later, that was rarely successful, and then, as here, mostly in small, little-seen films like Dmytryk’s Give Us This Day). The story of a poor sharecropper’s son’s way to moral damnation (or nearly so) is a frontal attack on the horrors of capitalism, with just a slight relativity in its achievement: it was fiercely against a capitalist but had little to say about capitalism as a system. Another typical element: it’s perhaps more about the radical nature of single scenes – like the grim shoot- ing of the protagonist’s friend – that creates the passion, and doesn’t fully continue in the film as a whole. Still, it’s an amazing demonstration of class consciousness as the more obvious example of Curtiz’ work, his earliest extant work My Brother Returns (1919), a short made during the Hungarian socialist rev­olution. And there is the skill to enliven and enrich materials that could easily be simply obvious: the basic loneliness and emptiness of the upper class in the midst of overflowing riches, the natural rhythms and the simple way of life of the poor. Especially the basic images of work, leisure, and the ways life is lived, created as a typically Curtiz action painting, are impressive. They are complemented by the classic WB montage sequences to which homage should always be paid. The film has a great cast, with Richard Barthelmess in one of his last relevant roles (there would still be Only Angels Have Wings) and Bette Davis in one of her first, and then, as in a dream team, faces like Rus­sell Simpson, Henry Walthall, Tully Marshall. The intuitions of class conflict are as aptly expressed in large scenes and in the “romance” between Barthelmess and Davis, the rich girl seducing the youngster less out of passion as with the idea of hypnotizing him into nonchalance about his own class and his folks. All the frail scenes that are about class feeling, the tragedy of deception, or even morality (Barthelmess’ speech at the end), are impeccable. As is the sense of doom and being trapped, in the best tradition of Curtiz: the crops come first, humans later if they happen to survive.

Peter von Bagh