Helen Twelvetrees is excellent as Flo, a burlesque dancer who gets fired by her harridan of a boss (the amazing Maude Eburne) and ends up virtually enslaved by a brutal oil explorer (Charles Bickford) in the heart of the South American jungle. Panama Flo is a top notch melodrama which also features Robert Armstrong in the rather thankless and not terribly interesting role of Flo's true love, Babe the aerial photographer. What really sets this film apart, however, is the exemplary cinematography of Arthur Miller, which shows just how far film had recovered from the static and stagebound early days of talking pictures. In Panama Flo, the camera moves fluidly--at times its almost hyperactive--swooping in and out of the action with long dolly shots and outstanding use of deep focus. Miller went on to win Academy Awards for his work on How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, and Anna and the King of Siam, and he also shot the atmospheric western The Ox-Bow Incident, which deserved a nomination but didn't get one. Panama Flo benefits further from second-unit work by a 24-year old Stanley Cortez, who clearly learned a lesson or two from Miller. An excellent little film that can be enjoyed as much for its technical superiority as for its very enjoyable and appropriately spicy pre-Code plot.
Review of Panama Flo
