Summary
A blizzard-scarred frontier becomes the canvas for a morality play soaked in contraband gin and glistening snow: Jen Galbraith, luminous daughter of a whisky-running patriarch, loves the very Mountie—Sgt. Tom Flaherty—who has sworn to dismantle her clan’s illicit empire. When sirens howl across the frozen St. Lawrence, she dashes through moonlit spruces to warn her sire and sibling, only to be shackled beside them in a timber-framed jail that smells of pine pitch and panic. Bail buys her freedom, yet frees none of the ghosts inside her; brother Val, jittery as a lynx in spring, fires a bullet into Snow Devil, an undercover constable whose blood steams on virgin snow. Pursued northward, Val is swallowed by a whiteout that erases hoofprints, morality, and mercy alike. Flaherty, dispatched to retrieve the fugitive, is lulled into stupor by Peter Galbraith’s laudanum-laced brandy, leaving Jen to vault onto a half-wild mare, gallop through drifts taller than church steeples, and deliver the Mountie’s forgotten warrant—an act both treason and baptism. In the final reel, Val is cornered for murder, but a death-bed aria from Pierre, the family’s loyal voyageur, rewrites guilt into grace; the lovers clasp hands while northern lights ripple overhead like celestial absolution.
Synopsis
Jen Galbraith is in love with Sgt. Tom Flaherty of the Royal Mounted. She is the daughter of Peter Galbraith, who is engaged in smuggling moonshine whiskey across the Canadian border. When she tries to warn her father and brother of the approaching police, she is arrested with the entire gang. Released on bail, her brother Val in an altercation shoots Snow Devil, a police spy; and trying to cross the border, he is caught in a blizzard. Flaherty is sent to intercept him but is drugged by the girl's father; Jen, however, braves the storm and delivers his dispatch. Flaherty later arrests Val on the murder charge, but the dying confession of his friend, Pierre, clears Val; and the lovers are happily reunited.
Review Excerpt
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The first time you witness Betty Compson’s Jen Galbraith pressing her gloved palm against the frost-laced window of a clapboard distillery, you realize Over the Border is not merely another Prohibition-era programmer—it is a chiaroscuro symphony, a film that inhales the metallic tang of bootleg liquor and exhales something close to pastoral tragedy. Director William C. deMille—often eclipsed by his more flamboyant younger brother Cecil—opts here for a spartan lyricism, allowing the Canadian wi..."
