Behind City Lights (1945)
This Republic programmer stars Lynne Roberts as a country gal who is slickered by a couple of city-fied jewel thieves, played by Peter Cookson and Jerome Cowan. Roberts is set up for a patsy by these two rogues, and nearly ends up in jail-and later on, narrowly escapes being rubbed out by gangsters.
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Fresh and Exciting
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Gretel goes to the big city. Hansel follows.Jean Lowell (Lynne Roberts), an unsophisticated girl who has spent all of her life on a farm, is about to marry Ben Coleman (William Terry), a neighboring young farmer, but an automobile crash interrupts the wedding. Crash-victims Lance Marlowe (Peter Cookson) and Perry Borden (Jerome Cowan)are carried in the house and the wedding (of Hansel and Gretel) is postponed. At first sight of Lance, Jean falls in love with him. In a few days, fully recovered, the two men return to New York. Ben releases Jean from their engagement and Aunt Sarah (Esther Dale) gives the girl her life savings to make possible a trip to New York, New York. Arriving in the big city, Jean stays at a fine hotel, acquires a fine wardrobe and, with Lance, visits all the places she has read about. She is blissfully happy , completely unaware that Perry and Lance are notorious jewel thieves.Trapped through an uncut diamond he has given Jean, to be set in an engagement ring, Lance and Perry, in attempting to elude the police, wreck their car and are killed.Jean, too proud to go home, remains in New York and obtains work. Hansel, suspecting that something is wrong, seeks her out, and, together, they return to the farm.Hmmm...two main characters enter stage left via an automobile wreck and, 45 minutes later, ironically exit stage right via another automobile wreck? Reads like Baum to me.