The Face on the Barroom Floor (1932) User Reviews

Dated early melodrama is corny and overacted at times, but still powerful and poignant.

[Larry41OnEbay-2 · 6/10 · 24 October 2012]

This rare film is a fine example of the timelessness of the social drama. If you can find it, see for your self how somethings never change. The Face on the Barroom Floor resurrects a corny old poem's title to illustrate the dangers of alcohol abuse. Bramwell Fletcher stars as Bill Bronson, a down-and-out drunkard who is the object of everyone's derision. It was not always thus: once he was a successful banker, with a beautiful wife (Dulcie Cooper) and a rosy future. But when Bronson tries to wean his father-in-law from the influence of an evil bootlegger, and when his own wife insists that he must drink occasionally to "be sociable," our hero succumbs to the family curse of alcoholism. One sip of booze leads to another, and before long Bronson has literally drunk away his entire life. Though it leans towards caricature and over exaggeration at times, Face on the Barroom Floor is in many ways as powerful as such later anti-liquor epics as The Lost Weekend and Come Fill the Cup.