Bad Girl was an early sound film success for Frank Borzage, who had made the beautiful silent films Street Angel (1928) and 7th Heaven (1927); it is another of Borzage's films about the struggle of two lovers to survive under difficult circumstances, in this case The Depression. Eddie (James Dunn) and Dorothy (Sally Eilers) meet in Coney Island. Dorothy models wedding gowns under the gaze of sexually harassing male customers and bosses, while Eddie repairs radios. Neither of them has much money but decide to get married after spending a night together (this being a pre-code movie there is sex hinted at). They start married life in a one-room flat and when Dorothy wants to go back to work Eddie feels his manhood threatened. When Dorothy finds out she is pregnant Eddie takes the money he had saved for his own radio shop and buys a fancier flat without discussing it with Dorothy. They fight, each wanting the child but thinking their spouse doesn't.
The film is based on a novel and play by Vina Delmar and it is mainly just the two characters, with support from Dorothy's friend Edna (Minna Gombrel). The camera is fairly static but does move quickly when the out-of-sync characters do, as they miscommunicate and are often late. There is an element of comedy in this (Delmar later wrote Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth in 1937), as when Eddie signs up for a prizefight and in order to go four rounds (at $10 a round) he tells his opponent in a clinch that he needs the money for his baby and his opponent goes easy on him. Borzage shows considerable sympathy for a working class couple struggling during hard times, just as he did later in A Man's Castle (1933), as the couple struggle to communicate honestly with one another.
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