Actor Burgess Meredith made his credited film debut as the avenging son Mio Romagna.[4]
The film greatly changes the ending of the play, in which the lovers Mio and Miriamne are shot to death by gangsters. In the film, the two are cornered, but Mio deliberately causes a commotion by loudly playing a nearby abandoned hurdy-gurdy and deliberately causing himself and Miriamne to be arrested, thus placing them out of reach from the gangsters. The film made a loss of $2,000.[2]
Writing for The Spectator in 1937, Graham Greene gave the film a good review, noting that "this play (in the original it was in blank verse) has [...] solid merits". Despite its genre, Greene commented that "there are situations [...] which have more intensity than mere 'thriller' stuff". He praised the "evil magnificence" of Ciannelli's acting as Trock, pointing out that "here, as in all good plays, it is in the acts themselves, as much as in the dialogue, that the poetic idea is expressed."[5]
^ abcRichard Jewel, 'RKO Film Grosses: 1931-1951', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 14 No 1, 1994 p56
^Ross, 2004: “...blank verse gangster story (loosely based on the Sacco and Vanzetti case)...liberated from much of the poetic dialogue by screenwriter Anthony Veillier...”
^Ross, 2004: "Meridith would never become the [box office success the critics] predicted in reviews of Winterset."
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