This very effectively captures the feel of society's seedier side in 1930; that however is the only interesting thing about this film. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the production, the photography and even the acting, these are all fine but there's nothing distinctive about it.
I doubt that anyone ran excitedly into RKO's commissioning office one early morning shouting that they had a brilliant, fantastic idea for a movie they wanted to make called FRAMED. A more likely scenario is that the board thought something like this was might fill the cinemas and make them money.
With a few very notable exceptions, films from 1929/1930 are probably not going to be as good as those which came afterwards but even for 1930, this is very disappointing. The Depression hadn't kicked in yet and this made by RKO which at the time was a big and prestigeous studio.
The fault I think lies in the script. The writer had probably been reading GREAT EXPECTATIONS the night before he wrote this. The Miss Havisham 'revenge by breaking someone's heart' motif is used here as the plot. Whereas however GREAT EXPECTATIONS has that one story as one of dozens of intertwined themes running through it, this has just this one. You can't expect every writer to be a Dickens but you should expect better writing than this. There's often a purity and a focus in early thirties pictures which can mean that there's little background, or sub-plots to interfere with the main story. That approach however only works when the story itself is strong enough to hold your attention. How a film usually does that is by making its characters relatable and engaging so that when you're watching, you don't just believe that they are real but you care about them. This has a rather dull, predictable and humourless story with unpleasant characters you couldn't care less about.
As a romance, which is what this tries to be, it's very flat. For something like this to work, the characters have got to be likeable, you need to want to know more about them. Some actors and actresses you just warm to straight away but unfortunately, though no fault of her own, Evelyn Brent isn't one of those. You might wonder why at one point she wears the most ridiculous comedy dress of the 1930 but apart from that you'll not give a hoot about what happens to her. She's actually a reasonable actress and carries off this role quite well but the role she's playing is not someone you'd ever want to know and she herself doesn't have that certain X factor which makes you want to watch her.
As for the men, Regis Toomey plays the part of the boyfriend with equal and contrasting measures of utter, utter blandness and annoying stupidity. After five minutes of him being on your screen you will hoping that someone shoots the poor sap and puts us out of our misery. Ralf Harolde plays the dullest gangster ever but you need to appreciate that this was written at the time and people like this obviously existed. Not all crime bosses in 1930 were interesting, they can't possibly all have been dynamic, loveable rogues or terrifying psychopaths, a lot of them were boring and bland like the role Ralf Harold's plays. The question is: why bothering making a film about uninteresting people? Authenticity does not always equal entertainment.
I doubt that anyone ran excitedly into RKO's commissioning office one early morning shouting that they had a brilliant, fantastic idea for a movie they wanted to make called FRAMED. A more likely scenario is that the board thought something like this was might fill the cinemas and make them money.
With a few very notable exceptions, films from 1929/1930 are probably not going to be as good as those which came afterwards but even for 1930, this is very disappointing. The Depression hadn't kicked in yet and this made by RKO which at the time was a big and prestigeous studio.
The fault I think lies in the script. The writer had probably been reading GREAT EXPECTATIONS the night before he wrote this. The Miss Havisham 'revenge by breaking someone's heart' motif is used here as the plot. Whereas however GREAT EXPECTATIONS has that one story as one of dozens of intertwined themes running through it, this has just this one. You can't expect every writer to be a Dickens but you should expect better writing than this. There's often a purity and a focus in early thirties pictures which can mean that there's little background, or sub-plots to interfere with the main story. That approach however only works when the story itself is strong enough to hold your attention. How a film usually does that is by making its characters relatable and engaging so that when you're watching, you don't just believe that they are real but you care about them. This has a rather dull, predictable and humourless story with unpleasant characters you couldn't care less about.
As a romance, which is what this tries to be, it's very flat. For something like this to work, the characters have got to be likeable, you need to want to know more about them. Some actors and actresses you just warm to straight away but unfortunately, though no fault of her own, Evelyn Brent isn't one of those. You might wonder why at one point she wears the most ridiculous comedy dress of the 1930 but apart from that you'll not give a hoot about what happens to her. She's actually a reasonable actress and carries off this role quite well but the role she's playing is not someone you'd ever want to know and she herself doesn't have that certain X factor which makes you want to watch her.
As for the men, Regis Toomey plays the part of the boyfriend with equal and contrasting measures of utter, utter blandness and annoying stupidity. After five minutes of him being on your screen you will hoping that someone shoots the poor sap and puts us out of our misery. Ralf Harolde plays the dullest gangster ever but you need to appreciate that this was written at the time and people like this obviously existed. Not all crime bosses in 1930 were interesting, they can't possibly all have been dynamic, loveable rogues or terrifying psychopaths, a lot of them were boring and bland like the role Ralf Harold's plays. The question is: why bothering making a film about uninteresting people? Authenticity does not always equal entertainment.