The Sin of Nora Moran (1933) is a film few are familiar with today. And it’s really no wonder: the story is mildly interesting, but forgettable.
Flashback sequences illuminate the painful past of the title character (played by Zita Johann): the death of her adoptive parents, her search for work, and a job offer with a traveling circus. Nora’s partner in the show is an abusive man named Paulino (John Miljan), who takes advantage of her one night. Nora leaves the circus and starts a romance with a married governor (Paul Cavanagh). When Paulino surprises Nora by returning for her, the governor ends up accidentally killing him. To protect her lover, Nora takes the blame and is sentenced to death by electrocution.
In Nora’s meticulous planning of how to dispose of the body, this film is a kind of precursor to Double Indemnity (1944). It certainly deals with several of the same key themes (passionate romances, infidelity, murder, and justice), although Nora Moran casts a more positive light on its titular suspect, portraying her as a silent martyr rather than a criminal.
Montages, such as the one where Nora looks for work in the city, do a good job helping the audience not only sympathize with Nora, but empathize with the stress of being caught up in such busy surroundings. The viewer is bombarded with crossfades of bright lights and bustling streets, which effectively convey the pandemonium.
At the beginning of the film, one is inclined to write Nora off as a distasteful floozy. But as the District Attorney pulls her file from a secret vault hidden within his bookshelf, it soon becomes apparent that she is a much more complex person than that. In fact, the entire moral of the film could be summed up in that simple shot: there is always so much more to a person than one collects at first glance, and there are things concealed beneath the surface that can only be gleaned from unlocking the hidden vault of their experiences.
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