With its exquisite sets and nightclub milieu, Broadway was the perfect vehicle for an early musical, and a musical version of the film--which we present tonight in its original silent format--is the best remembered of the two. Paul Fejos designed his own mobile crane--months before Lubitsch's The Love Parade or Mamoulian's Applause--in an attempt to circumvent the constrictions of the inevitable use of sound on the film. Silent or sound, Broadway is thus a visually imaginative work. Fejos also fought with producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. to keep the plot--a tough tale of rival gangs of bootleggers, the lowlife of Broadway--simple and smalltime. It was Laemmle who chose to transform the film's setting in the Paradise Nightclub into the glistening, showy stage it became. But Fejos' treatment remains bizarre and, as always, daring, and the resultant film is a gangland fantasy, brilliantly staged and set.