Frisco Jenny (1932)
Directed by William A. Wellman

Film Review

Melodrama was not William Wellman's strongest suit (in fact it was a genre he personally disliked) but the director makes a reasonable fist of this shameless weep-a-thon, ably supported by a fine cast headed by the incomparable Ruth Chatterton, one of the feistiest American actresses of the day.  Frisco Jenny has what is probably the most contrived plot of any American film melodrama, so most of its better points (and there are a few) tend to get washed away by the homespun narrative, which seeks to extract tears from its audience with as much subtlety as a dentist pulling teeth with an industrial size pair of pliers (and nearly as much pain).  Made before the Hollywood Production Code came into force, the film does at least manage to portray the seedier side of San Francisco life without the clumsy compromises seen in later films of the decade.  The early scenes set in a drinking house-cum-bordello are refreshingly to the point, although given that this den of iniquity is then laid to waste in an earthquake you can't help suspecting that the screenwriting team included one or two Bible bashers.

To his credit, Wellman does his best to manoeuvre the creaking plot into social realist territory, picking up on themes that were highly relevant at the time - for example, young women having to give up their children for adoption during the Great Depression.  Jenny's first sacrifice just about manages to ring true - the scene in which her infant son rejects her being the most authentic in the entire film - but her subsequent series of calamities soon becomes too much to stomach and you can't help wishing she would just walk under a bus to spare herself and her audience any more misery.  Wellman's direction lacks the inspired touch of his subsequent films, although he brings pep into an otherwise stilted courtroom scene by using a 360 degree whip-pan to avoid edits that would weaken the tension.  Whilst Wellman and Chatterton do the best they can with the mediocre material they are hampered with, Frisco Jenny reeks of low-grade schmaltz and is a struggle to take seriously.  At times, you could almost mistake this as a cruel send-up of the early 1930s weepy - and you can't help wondering if that was Wellman's intention all along.

Film Synopsis

San Francisco, 1906.  Jenny Sandoval is in love with pianist Dan McAllister but her father, the owner of one of the town's most disreputable saloons, is against their marriage.  When the earthquake strikes, Jenny loses both her father and Dan, and shortly after gives birth to a son, whom she christens Dan.  Tired of begging for alms, Jenny opens a brothel with the support of a crooked lawyer named Steve Dutton.  Within no time, Jenny is a self-made woman, but she risks losing everything when Steve kills a man and she incriminates herself to protect him.  Steve manages to secure her release from custody, but only after she has placed her son in the care of a childless couple.  When Jenny calls to collect her son, little Dan refuses to go with her, so she decides to leave him with his adopted parents.  Over the years, Jenny keeps an eye on Dan as he triumphs at university and embarks on a promising law career.  As prohibition begins, Dan becomes the district attorney and one of his first acts is to clamp down on Steve's illicit trade.  When Steve threatens to confront Dan and reveal the identity of his mother, Jenny shoots him dead.  Jenny's one hope of saving herself from the noose is to tell Dan that she is his mother.  But if she does that, she will surely ruin his career...