Signed by Warner Brothers in 1927, Michael Curtiz worked under the studio's system requiring a high level of output. But of the 44 films he made in the Thirties, The Strange Love of Molly Louvain is one the few that remain. It is a chance to see one of Curtiz's earliest explorations into the world of America's low life; his cynical treatment is already familiar to fans of his later films, which include Mildred Pierce and Casablanca. The story of a reckless, flighty woman loved by three men--a rich young man who leaves when baby arrives, a sometime salesman (sometime murderer), and a disenchanted newspaperman. “The milieu of slum streets and hotel rooms is re-created with chilling detail, the story told with a pitiless intensity” (John Baxter, “Hollywood in the Thirties”).