Almost shocking in its closeness to the real backstage life, this film is like an early 'noir' with a documentary touch in its obvious ambition to unmask show-business and reveal the naked truth about its cynical inhumanity. A mother and a daughter make a heart-rending performance, as the mother wants to rescue her daughter from her own fate as a showgirl being driven to her human ruin by sending her to a convent - the contrast between the convent and the musical stage is the first startling eye-opener and marvellously effective - but from the very start of the film the director's (Mamoulian's)camera eye opens up the bare realism of stage life for the exploitation of girls. It's a masterpiece of its kind, like almost all Mamoulian's films - he is a highly creative director who in each film concentrated on something new and introduced innovations which then matured into standards - he was also guilty of the first Technicolor film. Here he is evidently influenced by Erich von Stroheim in the kind of dissecting realism that dominates the film, but Mamoulian never becomes rude, only shockingly observant.