Released in 1932, two years before Hollywood studios began enforcing the restrictive guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code, William A. Wellman’s Frisco Jenny remains shockingly modern in 2016. Ruth Chatterton stars in the title role, as a good-hearted gal turned madam and bootlegger who is fiercely unrepentant of the choices she’s made. That is, until the final moments of the film, when she’s transformed, miraculously, into a cinematic saint on par with Dreyer’s Joan and Bresson’s country priest.
—Darren Hughes