El pecado de Madelon Claudet

The consummate Helen Hayes distinguishes this "fallen woman" film which would be only okay without her. The story resembles MADAME X, especially in the relationship between disgraced mother and clueless son. Starting as a farm girl in Normandy smitten with an American student (Neil Hamilton), Hayes progresses (or declines) to washerwoman, unwed mother, mistress to a wealthy crook (Lewis Stone), convict, high-class prostitute, streetwalker, aged derelict. She gets to play the spectrum of human emotions and vary her appearance from homely-wholesome to high glamour to harridan, from supreme confidence to abject humility. And she does it all with flying colors. Just as a study in good acting, this is worth a look. If anyone deserved an Oscar that year, it was she. And she got it.

The representations of prostitution are blatant, but no more so than in many other films of this period before the 1934 censorship clamp-down.