Summary
A gilded cage clangs shut around Patricia Leeds the instant her mother, a matriarchal harpy in pearls, hoists her onto the marriage-auction block; gavel falls to Brewster Howard, a plutocrat whose self-adoration eclipses his chandeliers. Under his icy matrimonial tyranny Patricia’s spirit erodes until, like a porcelain figurine hurled against marble, she fractures into defiant flight—arm-in-arm with the one man Howard deems invisible, the unobtrusive secretary John Reynolds. Their elopement detonates the husband’s vainglorious composure; he thunders after them, a vengeful deity in silk spats, until the fugitive lovers are cornered beside a hissing locomotive. One shove—whether born of rage or accident—sends Reynolds tumbling beneath iron wheels, a crimson crescendo that stains the rails and Howard’s conscience alike. Ruin follows fast: ledgers bleed red, creditors swarm like carrion, and the titan stands hollow-eyed on a penthouse ledge, city lights blinking like distant sharks. Yet in the noir-stained dawn it is Patricia—once chattel, now agent—who steps from the shadows, pronouncing a love re-forged in cruelty’s crucible, wrenching him back from the abyss and sealing a marriage now morphed into something darker, stranger, and perversely alive.
Synopsis
Patricia Leeds is placed on the auction block of marriage by her extravagant, selfish mother and sold to the highest bidder, Brewster Howard, a wealthy man obsessed with his own importance. Howard browbeats his wife to such an extent that for revenge she elopes with his secretary, John Reynolds. The humiliated husband pursues his wife and her lover, and in the ensuing fight, Reynolds falls to his death in front of an oncoming train. After returning home, when Howard discovers that his secretary has ruined him financially, he totters on the brink of suicide until Patricia appears and declares her love for him.
Director
