In William Wellman's pre-Depression Era silent, adapted from a book by hobo writer Jim Tully, Louise Brooks plays a young girl on the run from rural poverty, domestic violence, and a murder rap, having killed her brutal foster father in self defense. Dressed as a man, she joins a hobo friend (Richard Arlen), hops the freights, and braves the hobo camps, which are inevitably invaded by detectives and plagued by their own internal squabbles. Brooks' performance illustrates the impressive range of her acting abilities during her years in Hollywood in the silent era. And in Wellman's treatment of this American road story of tramps and boxcars, Kevin Brownlow (The Parade's Gone By) finds “a style of astonishing elegance--an elegance which seem(s) out of place in such a picture.... (This) did not destroy (Wellman's) natural flair for filmic storytelling. Beggars of Life is brilliantly thought out and superbly made....”