Summary
A sun-bleached tinkerer of wind-up contraptions, Jason trudges out of a honeysuckle-scented nowhere, pockets rattling with brass cogs and love-letters inked by Rose’s trembling hand, convinced Manhattan’s towers will kneel before his spring-powered marvels. Instead, the metropolis—chalk-striped, mercury-lit, carnivorous—peels him to the bone: his wallet vanishes in a burlesque of shadows, his coat is whisked away by a grinning pickpocket who melts into the El station, and our dreamer stands shivering on Broadway, skin prickling against October fog, clutching nothing but the memory of a girl who smells of clover. From this zero-hour he must re-invent himself, trading patent sketches for day-labor, sleep in sewer-scented flop-houses, court benefactors who speak in promises and leave only bruises, while somewhere uptown a tycoon eyes the very device that could restore Jason’s fortune—or doom him to anonymity. The film charts a picaresque odyssey through speakeasies, bohemian cellars, Chinatown opium attics, and the gilded parlors of Fifth Avenue, each frame tilted at an expressionist angle, until the prodigal either reclaims his fleece or discovers it was never gold to begin with.
Synopsis
Jason, a naive inventor raised in the country, leaves his sweetheart Rose and goes to New York to sell his ideas, but is promptly robbed of his money and his clothing.
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