Beaten down by life in the big city, Joan (Dorothy Mackaill) attempts suicide by jumping in the river, only to be fished out by nightclub owner Mac (Milton Sills). Hope springs eternal, and after Mac gives her a job singing in his nightclub, she finds herself all too willing to trust in the goodness of man. This sets up a clear dichotomy between Mac’s mobster underworld in the city and the nostalgic wholesomeness of Christmas on a country farm, with a sentimental newspaperman played by actor/director Kenneth MacKenna. Moral ambiguities in the characters – accentuated by the varying dynamisms of the performances – contribute to the complexity of a film that is neither strictly a hard-boiled gangster film nor a tender melodrama.
Man Trouble was the fourth pairing of former showgirl Mackaill and Sills. Sills had successfully made the transition to sound films, but was plagued by health issues. This film marked his return to pictures after a year’s medical leave, though he would shoot only one more film, The Sea Wolf, before dying of a heart attack on the tennis court later in 1930. Austrian-born director Berthold Viertel is best known for his Berlin output, but was brought over to work for the Fox Film Corporation in 1928. Here, he has uncredited technical assistance from Fred Zinnemann. Viertel and his wife Salka – best-known for her screenplays for multiple Greta Garbo titles – were famous for hosting salons of other émigrés and intellectuals in their Santa Monica, California home.
Due to the loss of pre-print material in the Fox vault fire in 1937, this film survives only as a 35mm nitrate workprint and has been virtually unavailable to view since that time. The audio has been restored, and the film has been photo-chemically preserved.

Jillian Borders