Heroes for Sale

Taken prisoner in the First World War, Tom Holmes becomes dependent on morphine because of his wounds. Back home, somebody else has taken the medal, he has no work, and he is alone with the addiction. He finds a job and pulls himself together, and then the Depression arrives and takes everything again. The film is not interested in a hero's rise. It is interested in a system that keeps knocking him down: it layers one man's story over every crisis of thirties America and offers no easy resolution at any stage. Workers thrown onto the street by mechanisation is argued about openly in it. The form is pre-Code, which means hard: addiction, police violence and poverty are shown directly. It runs about seventy minutes and events chase each other fast. William A. Wellman directed. Richard Barthelmess plays Tom, with Aline MacMahon and Loretta Young in the other parts. Who it is for: viewers who like Depression-era American cinema and socially minded pre-Code films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope. The film hits its protagonist repeatedly and even the optimism at the end is guarded.