Thunderbolt

A bank robber called Thunderbolt has lost his girl to a bank clerk, is caught and sent to death row, and finds the clerk framed and put in the next cell, so he plans to kill him before his own execution. The prison is Sternberg's: a corridor of cells with a Black choir singing in the dark, a dog, a warden who wants to be liked. George Bancroft plays the killer as a big man enjoying himself, and the confession at the end is delivered as a joke, which makes this Sternberg's only film that could be called a comedy. Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Jules Furthman writing. His first talking picture. Paramount, 1929.