Spring Shower
Director: Pál Fejős
Year Released: 1932
Rating: 2.5
Teenager Mária (Annabella) - who has a work permit - gets knocked up after a one-night stand with a man leaving a party (he "seduces" her by dropping candy in her mouth), is driven out of town for promiscuity, finds employment as an assistant cleaner and then as a drink girl, gives birth, has her child taken from her by the authorities (they declare her an "unfit mother"), goes mad and perishes ... and 15 years later is able, from the Great Beyond, to save her daughter from the same fate. For being a talkie, it's very skimpy with the dialogue - Fejős doesn't have Mária speak much (just wipe her brow), which made me wonder if the character is developmentally slow - and the movie itself is so vague it sort of moves into a dream state (she keeps envisioning bells and literally ascends to Heaven) and accidentally becomes an early experimental film. What's also fascinating is that in 1935 it was denied a license to be shown in New York for 'mocking religion': I guess the censor boards mistook gaudy excess for blasphemy.