Movies are inherently surreal when you think about it. The basic tools of cinema are all means of disorientation. Every filmmaker, no matter how conventional, warps time and creates impossible spaces. That’s why poorly made movies are often accidentally surreal; they show the seams. Well-crafted movies can do that, too, particularly during the early talkie period when anything that went beyond the “proscenium” effect looks bold and experimental. Exhibit A: The Sin of Nora Moran. It’s one weird bird. On a poverty row budget, director Phil Goldstone turns over the toy box of cinematic tricks and goes nuts with mad montages, double exposure illusions galore and lucid dream sequences. While he’s at it, he threads his way through non-linear storytelling that sets up mystery and tragedy with striking efficiency. The story is a simple one: A young woman (Zita Johann) with a hard luck past, present and future is in prison and about to be executed for murder. Something here isn’t right, though. There’s more to the story. All of these shadows on screen must be hiding something. Goldstone works his way through the half-truths and things unsaid to get to what really happened.
This is a little lost classic of ruthless fatalism and pre-Code seedy suggestion. It’s one of the planks on the bridge between earlier German Expressionism and later American film noir.