Borzage perennials Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell (Lucky Star, Seventh Heaven) star in the story of a poor Neopolitan girl arrested for prostitution on the eve of her wedding to a vagrant artist. That said, realism was never a priority for Borzage, who dealt in the visual transference of emotion, and this film is a triumph of Borzagian style and themes (over intractable content, some have said). The teeming back streets of Naples and the lives of their denizens are evoked with exquisite, Expressionist photography and painterly sets. This is a Naples of the imagination, and it is a dark dream, a screen on which shadows move. (Compare to De Sica's breezy location shooting in Marriage Italian-Style, January 28.) If some of the director's more delicate character turns play second to this artifice (with a music track that includes contrapuntal whistling!), all these elements are joined to create that special Borzage universe for lovers, where desire triumphs over sociology. (JB)