The Fight

A prim moral crusader with a ballot for a bludgeon storms the gin-soaked avenues of an unnamed American burg, intent on torching every speakeasy, roulette wheel, and jazz-joint that dares exhale the perfume of sin. Jane, gaunt as a Protestant steeple and twice as unyielding, trades hymnals for handbills, promising a dry town where Sabbaths outnumber Saturdays. The city's underbelly—bookies in sharkskin, tuxedoed pimps, piano-thumping prodigals—sniggers, then snarls, unleashing a tripartite assault: forged banknotes to bankrupt her, forged photographs to soil her name, and finally a live round to silence her pulpit-bred heart. She survives the fusillade, her white dress blooming crimson like a reluctant rose, and staggers to the ballot box where virtue, ever the showy diva, takes its bow. In the final iris-shot she exchanges vows with a reformed sportswriter beneath a confetti storm of dry amendments; the saloon doors swing shut, the jukeboxes choke on their last riff, and the town clock strikes a puritanical midnight.