Title: STUNNING!
Review: One of several film adaptations of the groundbreaking musical, this is by far and away the best. It is said that director James Whale considered this his finest work. (He is better known for his seminal "Frankenstein" films.) The sets and lighting are moody and the performances are superb - notably Helen Morgan's. A member of the original Broadway cast, Morgan, in her decline here, is heartbreakingly tragic as the equally tragic Julie she plays, and it is impossible not to blink back a tear when she sings "Bill." The black-and-white film has a theatrical, stagelike quality, unlike the 1951 version, when hollywood became obsessed with the "realism" of Technicolor and location, rather than studio, shooting, and one gets a sense of the "shabby gentility" that Edna Ferber conveyed in the original story. See this one!
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