A Film, a Painting, a Photograph: Some Notes on Pictorialism

Garnett’s 1930s studio film Her Man stars now-forgotten Hollywood-actress Helen Twelvetrees, who plays a tragic young woman trapped in a cycle of forced prostitution and petty thievery. Garnett’s 1930s studio film Her Man stars now-forgotten Hollywood-actress Helen Twelvetrees, who plays a tragic young woman trapped in a cycle of forced prostitution and petty thievery. Working her trade in a fictional Caribbean port, she falls in love with one of her prospective marks played by Phillips Holmes. Towards the end of the film she is walking in the street and collides with a cyclist. For a moment her shoe gets stuck in the wheel of the bike and, as she frees herself, the shoe is catapulted across the street into the gutter where it disappears into a nearby sewer. To the immense and cruel entertainment of the collected passers-by, she walks away from the accident, hobbling on one high-heel shoe until she passes Phillips Holmes who, having secretly watched the whole episode, gathers her up forcefully in his arms and bundles her into a passing horse-drawn taxi.