Oil for the Lamps of China

Hester Adams weds Stephen Chase, but she'll soon discover he already has a wife. He's married to his job with Atlantis Oil, acting as the company's roving man in China as it taps into a burgeoning market. Based on a bestseller and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, Oil for the Lamps of China follows Chase (Pat O'Brien) as he obeys the dictates of the corporate hierarchy. He'll betray a friend. Abandon his wife in childbirth to attend to a business emergency. Sacrifice one life and risk his own to protect a trifling amount of Atlantis's wealth. Critics noted the film did not wholly match the novel's anti-industry broadside. Yet even today there's enough here for anyone who's ever faced the conflict of career and personal life.

• drama