A Flirt There Was

A Flirt There Was pirouettes on the knife-edge between Edwardian primness and jazz-age abandon, tracing the meteoric combustion of a small-town ingénue—played with mercury-quick mischief by Dorothy Devore—who alights in a coastal resort and detonates every pocket-watch sense of propriety. Jay Belasco’s penniless charmer, equal parts poet and pickpocket, circles her like a moth fluent in moonlight; together they swindle dowagers, fleece love-sick clerks, and choreograph a getaway that feels half-dream, half-heist. The film never lingers on moral ledger-books; instead it revels in the electric shimmer of desire, the crackle of forged identities, and the vertigo of a world where a wink can purchase tomorrow. Its final reel unspools on a fog-drenched pier: sirens wail, coins scatter, and the lovers—now wearing each other’s masks—vanish into the dissolve, leaving only the echo of a laugh and a silk glove nailed to a post like a flag of surrendered respectability.