Summary
A saline fever-dream unfurls along a boardwalk where tides of nickelodeon light lap at the ankles of a foundling girl who believes the ocean is her stepfather. Each frame is a corroded postcard: Bobby Connelly’s runaway newsboy hugs a crate of unsold dailies like driftwood, Gertrude Selby’s pier-side fortune-teller spits saltwater when she breathes prophecy, Lou Marks’ carousel operator keeps time with a brass ring that never quite catches the brass ring, and Patsy De Forest’s silk-clad orphanage escapee trades her last shoe for a conch that whispers Frank P. Donovan’s scenario in Morse bubbles. The plot is a tidepool of nickel-reel coincidences: a stolen locket shaped like a nautilus, a Ferris wheel stuck at high noon, a moonlit adoption ledger inked in brine. The film ends with the girl wading into black surf while the camera stays on shore, immobile, as if cinema itself were the cruel step-parent who refuses to follow.
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