Chicago

Decades before jazz-baby murderess Roxie Hart strutted her stuff in the Bob Fosse musical or Oscar-winning 2002 movie, she was the scheming main character of a Broadway comedy by playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins, which Cecil B. DeMille turned into a lively 1927 silent film. Phyllis Haver stars as the brassy, bleached-blond Roxie, a conniving wild child who shoots her rich lover for jilting her and tells her loyal, adoring husband Amos (Victor Varconi) that the victim was a burglar. Soon the tawdry little murder escalates into a front-page soap opera, with Roxie winding up in the slammer playing cellblock diva. Although he didn't take credit (Frank Urson is listed as director), DeMille's fingerprints are all over this handsomely mounted and shamelessly entertaining mix of sex comedy, broad social satire, and snappy indictment of tabloid culture, all served up with a juicy slice of pre-code salaciousness. Presented in a nicely remastered edition with a lively score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, DVD extras include two fine archival documentaries (1950's The Golden Twenties, and 1985's The Flapper Story, which includes first-person remembrances of the era), as well as the visual essay “Chicago: The Real-Life Roxie Hart.” Recommended. (S. Axmaker)