The film was produced by Gotham, an affiliate company of Poverty Row directed by Sam Sax. Sax liquidated the company in 1929, when he became director of Vitaphone Studios in Brooklyn, before moving to the directorship of Warner productions in Great Britain. Presented as such, the film is nothing more than a jumbled medley of absurdities, but almost half of it is missing. It is however unlikely that a more complete version would give a different impression. And yet, considering the habitual level of Gotham productions, it was an ambitious film. Great effort can be seen in the scenography (the current critic at Variety thought he recognized the scenography from Gaucho, shot several months earlier by Fairbanks). Unfortunately however, this contributes to making the film even less plausible. For no good reason, the film passes from a Spanishy setting to an opulent and typically North American environment. It is in any case surprising to see what Howard Bretherton manages to make out of such a hodgepodge. With unshakable cool, he takes on the most incredible contradictions. If he happens to take an ironic slant on the story (at the beginning, throughout an entire act, he plays with inverting the characters’ sexual behaviors: Loy acts like a boy and Pidgeon like a girl), he does so without making fun of the characters. He develops the scene as best he can, without giving too much thought to how they fit together in the whole of the film. Turn Back the Hours also provides us with an opportunity to enjoy a very young Myrna Loy. The role does not allow her to build a great interpretation, but the way in which she defends her appearance is truly sublime.

Jean-Marie Buchet, Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique