Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

mark.waltz The cellblock tango that the title character here really is her dance of death as she faces her tragic past during the last hours of her life. Told through her fading mind while under a mind-altering sedative, the film mixes some pretty impressive special effects with an outstanding screenplay that documents her life from being adopted by an elderly couple to their tragic death, her attempts to become a dancer in New York, subsequently working in the circus, the tragic rape by a rather salacious lion tamer (John Miljan), and ultimately, her affair with a powerful politician who becomes governor. The back story is told through the sympathetic D.A. who just happens to be the brother of the governor's wife, maliciously determined to destroy the woman who wrote the anonymous letters to her husband.The heroine is gloomily played by Zita Johann, but if your life had the issues of hers, you'd be gloomy too. She is as equally moody as her character from "The Mummy", only showing any sort of happiness when she's with her lover (Paul Cavanagh) who also gets the chance to explain his side of the story to the audience. Claire Du Brey is Cavanaugh's wife, although they never share a scene together, simply seen sitting in brother Alan Dinehart's office listening to his story of the heroine's life. At first, the flashbacks show Dinehart as rather hard-boiled and Du Brey is definitely initially perceived as a vindictive fish wife, both using Cavanaugh for their own gains. There certainly isn't any love lost between the governor and his wife (only insinuated through his love for Johann and Du Brey's controlling personality), so as the story unfolds, it is obvious that she will have to open up her eyes to why he strayed.This film only challenges credibility a few times, but is mesmerizing throughout. For a Majestic film, it is also preserved extremely well and never drags or crackles and pops like many poverty row films. For a story that has been done over and over again, this one ranks as one of the best of the doomed dame films and is certainly deserving of moving up the ranks to become a classic beyond the exploitation theme it seems to have been promoted as.

theowinthrop They try, but for a short film made on a shoestring it shows it.Trying to gain some mileage from the big sleeper hit of 1931, THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET, which won an Oscar for Helen Hayes, and to use the novel narrative style of THE POWER AND THE GLORY, THE SIN OF NORA MORAN has neither a major studio backing it with it's resources nor the screenplay from one of Hollywood's all time top talents (Preston Sturges). It is a curiosity today because of it's twisty "the wrong person is going to die in the chair" plot, and due to some of the performers - all of whom did better films. Zita Moran (as was mentioned in the synopsis) is sentenced to die for a murder she never committed. She does not want to hurt all the people she cared for by revealing the truth. So she does die in the end.SPOILER COMING UP.She had been having an affair with the Governor of the state, played by that underrated cultivated actor Paul Cavanagh. His performance is worth watching because he is torn by his own knowledge of her innocence and his sense of duty (somewhat comparable to "Governor" William Powell's sense of duty versus friendship for the doomed murderer Clark Gable in MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, a far more interesting and better produced film). In the end Cavanagh's tragedy is not being able to live with what has resulted from his actions and lack of them.Because of it's attempt to be far better than it is, and for Paul Cavanagh's under-appreciated career, I rank this a "6".

boblipton This should be an excellent weeper, but it doesn't come off. Too much of the story is told by narration and the performances are flat and, in the case of lead Zita Johann, far too frequently leaden -- as often happens with a good actor, an apparently deliberate but boring choice. The cinematography is excellent, although the 'talking heads' finale is a bizarre choice.

jorozko This film is a great surprise. Apart from being thematically unusual (murder, suicide, corruption, capital punishment, rape, etc) it is visually astonishing and years ahead of its time, anticipating lots of stuff from 40's film noir to art-house European cinema (Bergman's Wild Strawberries for instance).The film uses the `narratage' technique first used the same year by Preston Sturges in `The Power and the Glory' (also a very interesting film, directed by William K. Howard and a clear precedent of `Citizen Kane') which consists of voice-over narration and flashbacks and flashforwards, but if takes it much further with a very complex structure that includes flashbacks within flashbacks, dreams, hallucinations, flashforwards and characters appearing in scenes where they were not originally present and commenting the action with the main character.The film is also extraordinarily shot with quasi expressionistic photography, lots of tracking shots, montages and very imaginative use of stock footage. To make all this even more admirable the film was produced on a very low B budget and it runs only 65 minutes.