Considering that Frank Borzage (bor-ZAY-ghee) deserves a place among the top American filmmakers of all time, it's a shame that he is virtually forgotten and even unknown outside of serious film circles. His work has simply been unavailable for too long. A few of his movies have been released on DVD but most of these are not among his best, most memorable work.

Fox Home Entertainment has now done its part to rectify the situation with its extraordinary, mammoth (and expensive) new DVD collection Murnau, Borzage and Fox, which assembles most of Borzage's Fox output of the late 1920s and early 1930s along with two F.W. Murnau-directed masterpieces (Sunrise and City Girl) and a reconstruction of a third, lost Murnau picture (4 Devils) by means of stills, script pages and reminiscences.

The collection encompasses the years that silent films gave way to sound and includes examples of both. The most interesting talkie in the set is certainly Borzage's Bad Girl (1931), a pre-Code comedy-drama starring the now-little-remembered Sally Eilers and James Dunn. Bad Girl is very much a movie of the Depression. It depicts the tough times of 1931 New York, with much of the story revolving around issues of money and trying to "make it" despite the hardships. Eilers plays a dress model living in a tenement with her loutish older brother, who keeps her on a short leash lest she fall down the road to ruin and lose her virtue. One day she flirts with Dunn on a bet. Since every other guy she comes across makes crude passes at her, Eilers' interest in Dunn is naturally piqued when he brushes her off. Dunn is a radio repairman - a real "dese 'n dose" New Yorker - with dreams of owning his own repair shop, and he has little interest in delaying things with love and romance. Nonetheless, he falls for Eilers and they eventually get married.

In an episodic manner spanning several months, we watch Dunn gradually give up on (or at least delay) his professional dreams in order to buy things that will make Eilers happy, such as furniture and a large apartment. He even takes up boxing - knowing he will be pummeled - in order to make some extra cash to afford a Park Avenue doctor whom Eilers longs to deliver their baby.

What this plot description doesn't convey is how Bad Girl is as much a comedy as a romantic drama. Right off the bat, for instance, Borzage shows us Eilers in a wedding gown, walking down an aisle. Only after a few long moments does he reveal to us that she is simply modeling the gown at a department store. What follows is a film with a pre-Code comic snap worthy of a Warner Brothers film of the era, complete with hilarious one-liners and brimming with sarcasm. The romantic aspects of the movie are in effect hidden under the comedy exterior, which has the effect of making the romance, when it peeks through, even more touching.

Borzage's visual style is not as lush or as soft-focused here as in many of his other films (including 7th Heaven and Street Angel, both also in this collection), but he still finds ways to visually envelop his lovers in their own world, a trait that is really his defining characteristic. In a Borzage film we often feel as if we are privy to the lovers' most intimate emotional moments. Here it's a little more subtle because of the comedy element, but it's still there. In one memorable sequence, for instance, Eilers and Dunn sit at the bottom of the stairs to Eiler's apartment, commenting on the other apartment dwellers as they walk past. By isolating the pair in their own little space as the rest of the world passes by, Borzage has them bond as characters falling in love. Even though they have the same working-class problems as these other people, the scene tells us, these two are different because they are discovering something special between themselves. Keeping our gaze on them alone makes us feel this, too.

Later, in a maternity ward, Borzage pulls off his most brazen use of the technique. Eilers is sharing a room with several other women in several other beds, but when Dunn enters to have a dramatic dialogue scene with Eilers, Borzage never once shows us the other occupants of the room. We don't even hear them. Borzage doesn't find some dramatic excuse to isolate Eilers and Dunn, such as having a nurse draw a curtain around Eilers' bed; he just frames everyone else out of the image, as if they don't even exist. It's a sign of great directorial confidence.

Other memorable moments include a standout boxing sequence in which Dunn and the boxer who is pounding him start a funny/touching conversation about kids while still boxing; a moment where the Park Avenue doctor realizes all that Dunn is going through for his services; and a truly bizarre comedy scene in which a maternity ward nurse taunts mothers by showing them babies that aren't theirs! Bad Girl moves ahead in time via straight cuts rather than fades or dissolves, a quite modern and rather unusual technique for the period.

If there's a flaw in this picture, it's that most of the plot tension and twists arise out of simple miscommunication. Dunn never just tells Eilers what he is doing and why, and she consequently misunderstands it all and sees his actions in the most negative ways possible. This kind of thing happens a lot in movies of the era and can be frustrating for modern audiences. Usually we must simply go with the flow, although it's interesting to consider how it feels like more of a cop-out in a film like Bad Girl as opposed to, say, an Astaire/Rogers film in which the flimsy plot is unimportant in the face of the great musical numbers. For a film with more dramatic-narrative ambitions, it's a little weak.

Bad Girl was the first of seven films to co-star Sally Eilers and James Dunn. Eilers at this time had appeared in about 30 pictures and developed into a popular leading lady. She had also just married famed cowboy star Hoot Gibson; later she'd marry producer Harry Joe Brown. James Dunn was practically brand-new to movies in 1931 and would soon fade away to inconsequential B films. A decade later, however, he made a huge comeback, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945).

Bad Girl was a hit at the box office and garnered Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was further nominated for, but did not win, Best Picture, losing to Grand Hotel (1932). (The Oscars that year covered a period from mid-1931 to mid-1932.) This was Borzage's second Oscar - he had previously won for 7th Heaven (1927) - and it was a bit of a surprise because while Bad Girl is a fine movie, it somehow managed to beat Josef von Sternberg, nominated for Shanghai Express. Also up for the award that year was King Vidor for The Champ. (Strangely not nominated were Charles Chaplin for City Lights, Ernst Lubitsch for The Smiling Lieutenant, Frank Capra for Platinum Blonde, James Whale for Waterloo Bridge and Frankenstein, and William Wellman for The Public Enemy.)

Fox has transferred this previously hard-to-see film in decent shape, though it is a little splicy at times. There are no extras particular to Bad Girl except for a sizable stills gallery, but the excellent documentary Murnau, Borzage and Fox, included elsewhere in the box set, does go into its background. (For more on that and the rest of the collection, see the separate Street Angel review on this website.)

It's great to see Bad Girl and other Borzage films seeing the light of day. Here's hoping other studios will step up and release some of his later masterworks as well.

For more information about Bad Girl, visit Fox Home Entertainment.To order Bad Girl (It is only available as part of the Murnau, Borzage and Fox set), go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold