Film Forum

(1927, Frank Urson & Cecil B. DeMille) Ripped from the headlines! - for once pretty true. Straight-from-Broadway filming of the play based on the real lover-shooting Beulah Annan case, hitting the screen three years after her sensational Windy City trial (only years later spawning a remake, Roxie Hart, with Ginger Rogers in the title role, and, much later, the Broadway musical smash and Oscar-winning film). In this first and most authentic version,  marvelously blousy Phyllis Haver is Roxie, with future screwball comedy great Eugene Pallette as her victim. Long thought lost, but now restored from a pristine 35mm nitrate print discovered by the UCLA Film & Television Archive in DeMille’s private collection. Courtesy Flicker Alley. Approx. 118 min. DCP.