Summary
Inside a sun-bleached back-lot, George Walsh—half-mogul, half-card-sharp—summons the aloof Parisian sorcerer Monsieur Hoe Beaux to conjure a photoplay from thin celluloid. Their bargain births a fever-dream of a narrative: freshly minted graduate Kirk White, pockets light but pulse racing, embarks on a steamer toward equatorial jungles where a dead uncle’s bullion glints like a mirage. Beside him, Violet Ray—equal parts flapper and flame—carries her own storm in a gilded smile. Mid-ocean the reel tilts: Jazzbando Boullion, a revolutionary dandy whose beret sits as rakishly as his ethics sit crooked, hijacks destiny. Bullets kiss the rigging, salt thickens with gun-smoke, the lovers are flung into a dusty pueblo turned open-air prison. From cantina to cathedral vault they slip, shadows among shadows, until a spark-gap telegram—Morse like Morse—summons leathernecks who crash the barricades in a crescendo of bayonets and bugles. Triumph tastes of copper and carnival; silhouettes merge in a final, breathless clinch. Lights up on the projection room: Walsh, exhilarated yet irked, banishes the auteur like a naughty schoolboy, the screen still fluttering with after-images of revolt, romance and the faint perfume of cordite.
Synopsis
When George Walsh learns that his director is ill, he hires a French director named Monsieur Hoe Beaux to write and direct his new film, and after it has been completed, they sit down to view the results. Kirk White, having finished college, boards a ship to South America to procure a large inheritance left to him by his uncle. On the way, he and his sweetheart, Violet Ray, encounter a group of revolutionaries led by Jazzbando Boullion. Because Boullion and his henchmen are also after the money, they imprison Kirk and Violet in a small town, but after a series of narrow escapes, the young man manages to send a wireless to the United States Marines. After their rescue, Kirk and Violet declare their love for each other. Following the screening back in the movie studio, Hoe Beaux is ordered off the lot.
