Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915)
Directed by Maurice Tourneur

Film Review

Of the three screen adaptations of the O. Henry short story A Retrieved Reformation that were made in quick succession in the silent era, the only one to survive to this day is the first, directed by Maurice Tourneur towards the start of the American phase of his career in 1915.  The 1920 remake, directed by Edmund Mortimer, and subsequent 1928 version by Jack Conway (to which some recorded dialogue was bolted on just prior to its release), have both been lost, which is a great pity as this could well have provided the clearest indication of how the American crime film evolved across the decade.  All three films take their title from the hugely popular stage play of 1910 on which they are based - Paul Armstrong's Alias Jimmy Valentine.

Maurice Tourneur covered a wide range of subjects in his films but he had a particular interest in crime.  His best and most influential films are in the policier and gangster genres, and when he gave up filmmaking (after being crippled in a car accident in the late 1940s) he devoted himself to writing crime novels.  Tourneur's Alias Jimmy Valentine has a pervasive grittiness which was comparatively rare in crime films of its time, and in it we can clearly see the seeds of the first wave of realistic gangster films - Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932).  The real warden of Sing Sing, Thomas Mott Osborne, gave his permission for several scenes to be shot within the actual prison, and this adds greatly to the film's cold authenticity.

With its occasional humorous digressions, Alias Jimmy Valentine is noticeably lighter in tone than Tourneur's subsequent crime films - Accusée, levez-vous! (1930), Au nom de la loi (1932), Justin de Marseille (1935) - but it does have some shockingly dark moments, such as the one in which the central protagonist picks up his buddy and brutally hurls him off a moving train.  One of the film's strengths is that the main characters are not the usual bland archetypes, but rounded individuals, particularly Jimmy and his cohorts Red and Avery.  This trio, convincingly portrayed by Robert Warwick, Johnny Hines and Alec B. Francis, make an amiable bunch, and Warwick's likeable rogue whose prospects for reform are hampered by social prejudice is an obvious precursor for the sympathetic hoodlum later incarnated by James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson.

By the standards of its time, Alias Jimmy Valentine is a slick and modern piece of film drama that offers a cogent morality tale within a popular entertainment package.  The expressionistic touches that Tourneur would increasingly employ in his films - notably his trademark use of silhouettes and shadows, prefiguring film noir - are present, and the editing (strongly influenced by the work of D. W. Griffith, whom Tourneur greatly admired) gives a surprisingly brisk pace to the fairly routine narrative.  Most striking is the staging of the bank robbery at the start of the film.  Almost the entire sequence is shot from high above the set, so that the crooks and their pursuers resemble mice scurrying about in a maze.  It is an imaginative visual metaphor for the fate of the career criminal - forever condemned to run up and down the same narrow passageways in life without any hope of starting a fresh.  This, the film's most inspired touch, is an apt piece of symbolism, given that the central theme of the film is whether man is free to choose his own destiny.

Film Synopsis

Lee Randall leads a double life.  By day, he is a respected, law-abiding citizen; by night he is Jimmy Valentine, an ace safecracker.  After pulling off a bank robbery with his three criminal associates - Red, Cotton and Avery - Jimmy makes a swift getaway on a train.  When Cotton begins to harass a young woman named Rose Fay, Jimmy gets into a fight with him and knocks him off the train.  Dying from his injuries, Cotton denounces Jimmy to Doyle, the detective investigating the bank robbery.  Jimmy is duly arrested and sentenced to a term in Sing Sing prison.  It so happens that Rose Fay is the daughter of the Lieutenant Governor, and when these two come to inspect the prison Rose instantly recognises Jimmy as the man who protected her honour.  The Lieutenant Governor arranges for Jimmy to be given a full pardon and, as Lee Randall, the former crook is soon leading an honest life as a bank cashier.  Doyle is still convinced of Jimmy's guilt however and continues gathering evidence to ensure he is brought to book.  One day, Rose's younger sister gets herself locked up in the bank's vault and only Jimmy's safecracking skills will save her.  But in rescuing the little girl Jimmy is unwittingly providing Doyle with the proof he needs to arrest him...