A Modern Hero is one of the oddities of the American Cinema. A critical and popular failure in 1935, it remains the only American film directed by the great German filmmaker G.W. Pabst (Threepenny Opera, Pandora's Box, Kameradschaft, etc.). Adapted from a novel by Louis Bromfield, the film stars Richard Barthelmess as “the illegitimate offspring of a drunken circus performer who callously uses three women to achieve an unethical business success only to see his dreams of happiness shattered by death and the unpredictable ways of the stock market.”