Finding that marriage conflicts with his carefree life, Teddy Brant, a dissolute man-about-town, fakes his own suicide, thus freeing Rose, his self-sacrificing wife, and his baby daughter Helen from life with an irresponsible drunk. Learning of her husband's alleged death, Rose remarries.
Carl Harbaugh
United States
Guilt ages like cheap whiskey—The Derelict proves it curdles into cyanide. The first time I saw Carl Harbaugh’s The Derelict, the print flickered like a dying candle; the second, it burned the back of my eyelids. What begins as a rote marital escape hatch becomes a chiaroscuro fever dream, a nickelodeon Crime and Puni...
Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.
Carl Harbaugh
Carl Harbaugh
Community
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" Guilt ages like cheap whiskey—The Derelict proves it curdles into cyanide. The first time I saw Carl Harbaugh’s The Derelict, the print flickered like a dying candle; the second, it burned the back of my eyelids. What begins as a rote marital escape hatch becomes a chiaroscuro fever dream, a nickelodeon Crime and Punishment wrapped in flapper fringe and stale cigar smoke. Harbaugh, usually a gag-man for Fox, here channels Dostoevsky via the Bowery, stitching together a morality play whose seams..."
