Summary
Under the sodium glare of Paradise, Nevada—a frontier Xanadu stitched from whiskey vapors and roulette static—Mercedes Murphy, corseted in scarlet taffeta and proprietorial venom, reigns over a saloon that doubles as a secular cathedral where gin is communion and ragtime hymns bleed into midnight. Her partner Slick Barney, a cardsharp with a smile like a switchblade, shuffles decks and loyalties with equal dexterity. Into this Eden of broken glass strides Reverend McGregor, a gaiff-eyed zealot planting a pine-plank chapel like a flag on contested soil, his Bible thumping counterpoint to the player-piano’s lewd cancan. Mercedes, first amused, then rattled, finds the sulfur of conscience seeping through floorboards; she shutters the dance hall, trading clinking spurs for psalms, only to discover that her dewy sister Olive—once the town’s porcelain Madonna—has been quietly re-chiseled by the preacher’s private catechism. In the hush that follows last call, the film becomes a chiaroscuro of sibling devotion and spiritual fraud, where every hallelujah masks a wolf-whistle and every prayer book might conceal a love letter. The final shot—Mercedes striking a match on the church bell, torching both gilded cage and moral ledger—burns so long in the retina it leaves after-images of every silent-era scarlet woman who ever dared to rewrite redemption on her own flaming terms.
Synopsis
Mercedes Murphy and her partner, Slick Barney, run a saloon and dance hall in the tough town of Paradise, Nevada. While Mercedes is a hard-nosed businesswoman, she has a soft spot for her sister Olive, with whom she lives. One day a preacher, Rev. McGregor, who is determined to "reform" Paradise, sets up his church right next to the saloon. Mercedes is at first opposed to the reverend, but is eventually won over by his sermons and closes the dance hall. However, she soon discovers that Olive's "virtue" may no longer be so virtuous--and she suspects that the minister might be responsible for this.
