John Farrow's Men in Exile (1937)

Men in Exile is Farrow's first film, made at the B unit of Warner Brothers.  It's an efficient and entertaining B picture, with a lot of plot in its 58 minutes running time.  Dick Purcell is a cabdriver in Miami whose cab in used in a heist and when he's blamed he leaves for the island of Caribo, which is composed of hotels, bars and police stations; it looks very much like the place McGinty fled to in Preston Sturges's The Great McGinty (1941)  Purcell gets a job in a bar/nightclub and falls in love with June Travis, daughter of the owner.  Purcell avoids getting mixed up in the gun-running of an old friend, played by Norman Willis, from stir, which Travis's brother (Alan Baxter) is involed in, while also romancing Willis's wife.  

The style of the film is rather flat; the cinematographer is Arthur Todd, who photographed eight films in 1937 (Farrow directed three films in '37, five in '38 and six in '39), as Farrow devotes his attention to the effective bunch of character actors in the film, including Olin Howland, Victor Varconi and Veda Ann Borg.  The screenplay is by Roy Chanslor, who wrote the novel that Nicholas Ray turned into the film Johnny Guitar (1954).  Farrow was a prolific director of B movies, though unfortunately his films became no more personal when he moved on to bigger budgets later, with movies such as The Big Clock (1948).