Bruce Loeb on Piano With this low-budget masterpiece of atmosphere, composition and character, Josef von Sternberg "arrived" in Hollywood. Written by Ben Hecht, whose cub reporter days in Chicago gave him first-hand knowledge of the subject, Underworld was a forerunner of the modern gangster film as it was to evolve in the thirties, and the first in which the anarchic gangsters are the heroes. George Bancroft is particularly compelling as Bull Weed, a big-time Chicago hoodlum whose rebellion is motivated by intensely Romantic concerns. As his lieutenant, Rolls Royce, Clive Brook is a melancholy, failed intellectual. And Evelyn Brent is Sternberg's pre-Dietrich vamp, Feathers, whose name and costume match her ineffable moodiness. Eileen Bowser (Museum of Modern Art), writes, "What makes this unmistakably a Sternberg production is that the action and the suspense merely contribute to the drama played out between two men and the girl they both love.... That they are gangsters or how they become so is of no consequence.... Our only concern for the main characters is with what they are feeling, and one of Evelyn Brent's feathers floating through the air can reveal that as well as any amount of acting on her part...."