Summary
A predatory Midas in patent-leather gaiters, Marcus Gard commandeers boardrooms like battlefields, leaving Marteen—an adversary hollowed by relentless hostile raids—to swallow a bullet in a velvet-lined study. From the blood-spattered stationery emerges the widow Marteen, a wraith in jet-beaded crêpe, clutching the revelation that her tormentor’s marital signature is as forged as his quarterly reports. She begins to bleed him with epistolary shrapnel: letters, hotel ledgers, second-wife cameo-lockets, each demand another slice off the gilded carcass. Their pas de deux of extortion unfolds through nocturnal piers, séance-parlors, and a rooftop where the city’s heartbeat syncopates with the whirr of newsreel cameras. When Gard’s cadaverous business partner—equal parts Rasputin and railroad baron—turns up suffocated beside a smashed ledger, the widow stands framed, scissors in hand, silhouette haloed by sodium streetlights. The film’s final reel dissolves into a chiaroscuro tribunal: is she avenging angel, opportunistic siren, or terrified orphan of male capital? Each answer costs another dollar, another soul.
Synopsis
Millionaire Marcus Gard's business tactics are so ruthless and heavy-handed that one of his rivals, Marteen, commits suicide. His wife finds out that Gard is a bigamist and decides to get her revenge by blackmailing him. When Gard's corrupt business partner turns up dead and Mrs. Marteen is found at the scene, suspicion for the murder falls on her.
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