A series of "art" titles fill the screen to establish the mood: "A great city in the dead of night...streets lonely...moon clouded...buildings as empty as the cave dwellings of a forgotten age." Then, an explosion rips… More A series of "art" titles fill the screen to establish the mood: "A great city in the dead of night...streets lonely...moon clouded...buildings as empty as the cave dwellings of a forgotten age." Then, an explosion rips apart the front of a bank. Criminal mastermind Bull Weed (George Bancroft) having "closed another account," hops into the getaway car driven by his shabby but erudite associate Rolls-Royce (Clive Brook). With the police in hot pursuit, Bull Weed pauses long enough to drop a few bills into the tin cup of a blind beggar. Thus begins the classic gangland melodrama Underworld, a master blend of realism, expressionism and sentimentality served up by director Josef Von Sternberg and screenwriter Ben Hecht. The story traces Bull Weed's rise from common thief to underworld kingpin with the help and advice of the wily Rolls-Royce. Inevitably, Bull's sweetheart Feathers (Evelyn Brent), falls in love with Rolls-Royce, but she remains loyal to Bull. But when he's arrested for his participation in the murder of a rival gangster, Bull assumes that Feathers and Rolls-Royce have betrayed him. Breaking out of jail (a brilliantly conceived and executed sequence, in which sounds are conveyed in purely visual terms), Weed prepares to shoot down both his girl and his pal but discovers at the last minute that he's been wrong about them all along. Satisfied that Feathers and Rolls-Royce have remained true-blue, Bull Weed willingly surrenders to the Law. A true feast for the eyes, Underworld is essential viewing for anyone who thinks that all silent films are crude and old-fashioned; though the story creaks a bit, the techniques employed by Von Sternberg and his cinematographer Bert Glennon are as fresh and contemporary as anything being served up by the computerized filmmakers of today.