Akim Tamiroff is the chief cashier in the town of Linzau in Pennsylvania. He has a fine beard, a fine wife in Gladys George, and four fine children. He is a little pompous, but dedicated to his family and work, and kind to everyone. He is held in such high esteem that when the bank needs to make a delivery of $100,000 to a client in New York City, Tamiroff is chosen. He is lonely at first, and a bit put off by the scale of Manhatan, but he soon meets banker Berton Churchill and reporter Muriel Angelus. They are actually con men who get him drunk and roll him for the $100,000. Tamiroff cannot return home, where everyone thinks he has been killed defending the money. So he spends twenty years, wandering the Northeast, a bum.
We'll never get to see the 1927 version of this movie which won Emil Jannings his Oscar for Best Actor, but director Louis King knows this is a remake, so Tamiroff, in a rare sympathetic role, is made up to look like Jannings, and there are long stretches of the movie which are basically silent performances, with background noises. This version is very good until the ending, which is far too sentimental for my taste, but it is very good, even as it makes me long to see the Jannings version, of which only snippets survive.
We'll never get to see the 1927 version of this movie which won Emil Jannings his Oscar for Best Actor, but director Louis King knows this is a remake, so Tamiroff, in a rare sympathetic role, is made up to look like Jannings, and there are long stretches of the movie which are basically silent performances, with background noises. This version is very good until the ending, which is far too sentimental for my taste, but it is very good, even as it makes me long to see the Jannings version, of which only snippets survive.