Sadie Thompson (1928)

Directed by Raoul Walsh
Starring Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore and Raoul Walsh
Produced by Gloria Swanson Pictures

A small steam ship pulls into port at Pago-Pago, an outpost on an island in the South Pacific most notable for its constant, torrential downpours.  Five passengers disembark: a strict reformist couple looking to bring the Lord to the island natives, a friendly married couple, and the beautiful and mysterious Sadie Thompson.  For Sadie, the island is a way station on the route to starting life over.

The passengers soon learn they are stuck on the island due to a small pox outbreak.  The marines stationed at Pago-Pago take an immediate interest in Sadie, but she begins falling for one in particular, Sargent O'Hara. 

The reformer, Mr. Davidson, also takes an interest in the woman, but for entirely different reasons.  He suspects Sadie is immoral and will convert her or force her to return to San Francisco and her old life.

Will Sadie repent?  And will it be enough to keep her from returning to the U.S. where a prison cell awaits?



There is really one reason and only one reason to see Sadie Thompson: Gloria Swanson.  She's put through just about every emotion a movie can demand of an actress and is equal to the task again and again.

She starts as a sultry temptress, moves into the shy beginnings of a romantic relationship, becomes arrogant about her ability to outwit Davidson, frustrated and angry when the tables get turned and docile and penitent when she gives up.  You believe her at each and every moment.  She's a force of nature in a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination.

Swanson's bravura performance really is the only thing this film has going for it though.  The primary conflict between Swanson's Sadie and Lionel Barrymore's Davidson just never reverberated with me.  Barrymore is too cartoonishly evil.  His demands of Sadie are irrational and inconsistent. One moment she has to repent to be allowed to go her way.  The next, the only way to repent is to go back to San Francisco.  If we were given some idea of what was motivating him, that would help.  But the film just makes him an obstacle in Sadie's path.

I would have a little more sympathy for Sadie's plight if there was a little more to demonstrate she was trying to become good.  The film however leaves her as someone on the run from the police who protests her innocence, but there's never really any proof that she's not guilty.  In fact, it feels like she's not owning up to her transgressions.

From a directing standpoint, there's not a lot going on. The camera set ups are pretty traditional and other than lots and lots of rain, the production design doesn't feel real.

Swanson is great, but there's not much else to recommend here.  The film hits the same notes over and over until their dull monotony fills your brain.  If you want to see the future star of Sunset Boulevard, by all means check it out.  Otherwise it's...

** out of *****

NOTES: The last reel of Sadie Thompson is missing.  To make up for it, Kino reconstructed the scene from stills, production notes and even from footage in a later remake.  I actually thought I knew what happened, then read on-line synopsis which showed I got it wrong.  Sad that the ending is lost.

The film was controversial in its time.  The movie is based on a book and play (the latter called Rain).  The play Rain ended up on an unofficial blacklist amongst Hollywood studios due to some racy content.  Swanson worked clandestinely to make the film which was almost not released.

Photo from Ferdy on Films and Lolita's Classics

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Four Sons (1928)

Directed by John Ford
Starring James Hall, Margaret Mann and Charles Morton
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

In pre-World War I Germany, a small but bustling Bavarian village is home to a Mother Bernle and her four sons. Franz is a military officer. Joseph rides around town in hay cart with his friends and without a care in the world. Johann is the strong one and enjoys a hard day's work. Andreas is the youngest and daydreams while tending his sheep. They are a tight-knit family despite their very different personalities.

On mother's birthday night, she gives Joseph all of the money she has saved so that her son can follow his dream of moving to America to open a deli with his friend. The birthday bash becomes a farewell party, with the entire town in attendance.

Soon, Joseph is in New York with his deli plus a new wife and a son. Back in Germany, war has come and Franz and Johann join the army.

Of course, tragedy lurks in the family's previously perfect existence. Which of the brothers will survive the conflict? And can Joseph escape the impact of the war from America?



John Ford's Four Sons wants to be an epic family-centric melodrama set in the backdrop of World War I. It wants to navigate the tragedy and triumph of the Bernles across two continents as it literally pits brother against brother.

Sadly, the story is so disjointed it cannot evoke any emotion except frustration.

It's a shame too because Ford's direction and much of the acting are brilliant. The idyllic German hamlet that serves as the backdrop of the film is beautifully realized and populated by any number of memorable and eccentric characters.

That village is part of the problem though. It seems to morph to fit whatever the latest plot point is. First, it's barely a small town where everyone knows everyone else. Later, it becomes home to a massive military barracks capable of sending hundreds of men off to war. We are in the same place, but the plot demands a large military parade from the town.

If the town has two personalities, Joseph is schizophrenic. He starts with a yearning for America and is able to realize his dream. He opens a New York eatery called the German-American Delicatessen and reprimands one of his employees for even talking about the war. A couple scenes later, Joseph has renamed his shop the Liberty Delicatessen and is off to war fighting Germans on behalf of America.

Sorry, but some explanation is needed. He loved life back in Germany. His brothers fought for the Fatherland. Why is he suddenly not simply pro-U.S., but anti-German? He had a run-in with one German officer early in the film, but that hardly explains his turn against his family and his entire way of life.

As for the other brothers, what's to say?  They do not really exist as characters, but as plot points to be offed when the writer is looking for an emotional reaction.  Their characterization has all the subtlety of a boy band (He's the leader!  He's the sensitive one!  He's the strong one!).  It's hard to feel much for caricatures when they die.

Joseph's inconsistency and the portrayal of his brothers are emblematic of the film as a whole. Each scene is designed to elicit a specific reaction: comedy, sorrow, disgust, but they are completely disconnected from one another. Things happen not in a logical order, but because the moment requires it. Four Sons plays better as a series of short films, not a cohesive whole. 

Ford's technical brilliance and the solid acting from the ensemble can't disguise that the basic plot has holes. And the gaps force the characters to act and react in ways that feel at best false and at worst maddeningly inconsistent.

** out of *****

Photo from Silent Era

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The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring Maria Falconetti
Produced by Société générale des films

The court room is abuzz with motion and whispers as the tribunal prepares to try the leader of a rebellion. The tension builds until the leader enters under guard and is revealed to be...

... a waifish 19-year old girl with close cropped hair.

The trial is not so much a judicial proceeding as an effort to extract a confession from the charismatic Joan of Arc. When questioning fails, the interrogators are not above a little torture.

Will Joan confess? Can she live with herself if she does?

The Passion of Joan of Arc has a technical virtuosity that instantly separates it from most 1920s films. It feels like it was cut and edited by Michael Bay's great-grandfather.

Of course, instead of special effects like explosions, alien robots or Nic Cage, Dreyer gives us one of cinema's most indelibly perfect images: the face of Maria Falconetti as Joan.

We live almost entirely within Joan's face for over an hour. The extreme closeups bring us into her terror, her uncertainty, and ultimately her resolve.

Indeed, the only time we seem to leave our heroine's face is to see her accusers. And once again Dreyer's camera brings us right into their grotesque features. No bead of sweat or unsightly wart goes undocumented. Dreyer's camera looks up at Joan's tormentors, making them larger than life.

Of course, the actual trial amongst men is only a small part of the drama. The real struggle is for Joan's soul. We see her torment writ large across her face. You never doubt what she's thinking.The dialogue intertitles are almost extraneous.

There's a courage in setting this entirely at this point in Joan's life.  Let's be honest: few saint stories have the cinematic potential of the life of this warrior saint.  Dreyer skips over the obvious, potentially cliched moments and instead wrings all of the drama of her short existence from a trial.

In case it was not obvious, I loved this film.  The Passion of Joan of Arc is the perfect melding of story, star and direction.  Highly recommend.

***** out of *****

NOTES: This is Falconetti's only real credit.  She was in a couple of silents in 1917, but that was it.  Somehow her never acting again in another film role is simultaneously tragic and perfect.

Dreyer built massive and very expensive sets for the film... and we almost never see them.

Photo from The Baltimore Sun

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The Battle of the Sexes (1928)

Directed by D.W. Griffith
Starring Jean Hersholt, Phyllis Haver and Belle Bennett
Produced by Feature Productions

Businessman William Judson has done it again.

Splashed across the front page of the newspaper is his latest real estate deal, celebrating both the man and the sizable check he has coming.  His barber is suitably impressed as Judson arrives for his latest trim.

Unfortunately for Judson, the barber's not the only one taking note.  Gold digger Marie is sitting one chair over from the tycoon and begins hatching a scheme.  Working with her boyfriend Babe Winsor, Marie conspires to move into Judson's apartment building and seduce the man, taking him for all he's worth.

Her task will not be easy.  William is happily married and dotes over two teenage children.  That's not to say Marie has no hope.  As she's plotting a scheme to lure the target into her apartment as he passes by, she spies a mouse and shrieks.  The brave Judson bursts in to investigate, which is all it takes for Marie to sink her claws into him.

Soon, the husband and father is "working late" every night.  Life in the Judson abode is becoming strained.  The family matriarch takes the kids out to the new club where they run into the cheating couple. Mr. Judson moves out, his wife contemplates suicide and his daughter is desperate.

Can the girl bring her family back together again?  And will it take a... (*dramatic pause*) murder?

The Battle of the Sexes is one of the final films from D.W. Griffith, a true film pioneer whose work changed the way movies were made.  The Birth of a Nation.  Intolerance.  Broken Blossoms.  The man literally created the language of cinema and we still see his influence on the big screen today. 

He also seemed to lose his mojo in the 1920s. Way Down East. America. Sally of the Sawdust.  None of them are terrible, but they certainly seem a far cry from the ambition of his earlier work.

So where does The Battle of the Sexes fall?

Sadly, it's right down the middle.  It's an okay film, but certainly not great or even good.  Thought there are aspects of the old Griffith that peek through.

More than any other director of the silent era, Griffith told stories with strong women characters.  It takes a while to get going here, but when Judson's daughter Ruth finally emerges as our plucky heroine, she becomes the center of the story.  She's desperate to save her mother and bring back her father from his "sickness."

Even if that means killing the mistress.

Of course, when the moment comes and the gun is in her hand, she cannot pull the trigger.  She needs to act, but she's still a good person.  And her father's despicable actions cannot drive that out of her.

When it's Ruth's story, I like the film a lot.  Sadly, there's a lot of the tale that is William Judson and Marie's alone and that is where the cracks show.  There are pacing issues. One minute, the father has provided his wife a thoughtful gift, looking into her eyes to see the reaction as she opens it.  The next scene, he's falling for Marie.  There's no build to it.  We do not see a reason why he falls for her.  It just happens.

There are tonal problems as well.  Sometimes, the film does blend its comedy and pathos well, like when William buys a fat burning machine that provides us both a humorous and a pathetic image.  However, the last act of the movie wants to have a zaniness to it that is impossible when the emotions of Ruth are at the center of the situation and there's an attempted suicide hovering over the scene.

As to the acting, Sally O'Neil's Ruth was the only standout.  She a bit too cloyingly naive at the beginning, but her confusion and sadness upon seeing her father at the club are perfect.  So too are her panic as she prevents her mother's suicide and her turmoil when the moment comes to off Marie.  The rest of the actors here are fine in their roles.

Which is a good way to leave The Battle of the Sexes.  It's not bad.  It's not good.  It's fine.  You won't mind watching it, but you won't remember it in a year or even a month.  And if that sounds like damning with faint praise?  Well, it is.

**1/2 out of *****

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The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Directed by Paul Leni
Starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and  Olga Baclanova
Produced by Universal Pictures

Usually movie reviews focus on the mechanics of a film: acting, directing, pacing, effects and how those elements combine to produce an emotional reaction in the viewer. It's about figuring out whether a film works, then taking it apart to get at the why.

With The Man Who Laughs, I throw most of that out the window. Why? Because the concept of the movie has so enveloped my brain, I have to focus my attention there.

Putting the film aside for the moment, imagine being the son of a man on the wrong side of the law. Your father pays for his crimes, but, as part of the bargain, you are disfigured. Not just scarred, but you're face is turned into a perpetual smile.

What do you do? How do you express yourself to another person? How do you earn someone's trust when they can't see what you really think by looking at your face?

I just think about the way I use my face to convey feelings and imagine that being taken away. What would that do to a man? How could you face the world?

That's the powerful set up for The Man Who Laughs. Conrad Veidt plays a perpetually smiling sideshow performer Gwynplaine. His rebel leader of a father was captured and killed when Gwynplaine was a boy, but the king decrees the youth shall be disfigured and made to laugh at his father forever.

He grows up with a blind girl Dea (whom he rescued from death during a snowstorm) and his adoptive father Ursus. The three put on shows that take advantage of the public's fascination with Gwynplaine's face.

Queen Anne learns that Gwynplaine is the rightful inheritor of his father's lands, lands currently held by the Duchess Josiana. The queen loathes the duchess and decrees that she should marry Gwynplaine, primarily to embarrass her.

Gwynplaine loves Dea and can't bring himself to marry Josiana, setting our hero against the queen and all her power and propelling the film toward a finale I won't spoil here.

As overwhelming as the concept is, it's Conrad Veidt who really sells the situation. You read every emotion in his eyes despite his unmoving mandible. Throughout the film, he wears a device in his mouth that stretches it into a smile, making his acting feat doubly impressive: not only does he have to emote with only the upper half of his face, he acts despite wearing a prosthetic that looks painful.

I talked about mechanics earlier and there are issues here. Dea is a non-factor for most of the film. When they finally giver her something to do, it could not be more passive as she is literally dragged around by a dog and a couple other people.

The other big issue here is the pacing. The film has a fantastic, gothic opening, then takes forever to get to its climax and rushes through the final act.

However, every time Veidt lowers that scarf to show us that grotesque smile, all of the film's issues are relegated to the back of my mind. Ideas are powerful and the idea behind The Man Who Laughs is overwhelming.

**** out of *****

NOTE: It's completely obvious when watching the film, but Veidt's Gwynplaine was the inspiration for Bob Kane in creating the Joker, Batman's most famous villain.

Photo from Appiary and Dad's Big Plan

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Arsenal (1928)

Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Starring Semyon Svashenko, Amvrosi Buchma and Georgi Khorkov
Produced by VUFKU

It's 1918 Kiev and the workers are being oppressed and ignored by the government. Russian troops take liberties with the women and the men are shouted out of political gatherings. But when the workers take over the local munitions factory, it sets up a conflict that may ultimately change the nation.

I hated Arsenal.

Hated it. Hated it. Hated it.

There are some interesting images put on screen early on. I particularly like the soldier succumbing to the laughing gas on the battlefield. But the ideas are drawn out and the viewer is bludgeoned over the head with the imagery.

I get it. Move along.

Sadly, instead of picking up the pace, the movie's middle becomes a slog. We get a shot of a man staring. Cut to another man staring. Now cut back to the first man staring. Sometimes the men are angry or laughing. But there's always a lot of staring.

Okay, maybe there is a pinch of glowering in there too.

By the time, the film gets to the munition factory standoff, I just didn't care. Sure, I knew the Russians were the bad guys, but all I really got from the good guys was that they didn't like the bad guys. I never felt invested in their plight. When the film reaches its final moment, instead of being inspired, I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the scene.

I'm sure in its time and place, this was effective propaganda. Some of the imagery here is frame-it-on-your-wall gorgeous. But Arsenal is ponderous, dull and repetitive. Unless you are a Russian historian or a masochist, stay away

* out of *****

Image from The One-Line Review

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Looking Back: F.W. Murnau

This post is part of Comet Over Hollywood's "Gone Too Soon" Blogathon.  Check out the rest of the contributors this weekend.

On March 11, 1931, legendary filmmaker F.W. Murnau took a trip up the California coast in hired Rolls Royce.  He had spent the previous year working on Tabu, a film set on the Polynesian islands featuring natives in both the cast and crew.  A week later, the movie would open as both a critical and commercial success.

Sadly, Murnau never lived to experience the public reception of his film.  An automobile crash took his life on that fateful journey out of Los Angeles in March. And the world lost one of film's first true visionaries at the age of 42.

If D.W. Griffith invented the language of film, Murnau became its first poet, shaping that language to build worlds and seize our imagination in ways no filmmaker had done before.  He is perhaps most associated with 1922's Nosferatu, a gothic retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula.  The film manages to be both epic in its scope and intimate in drawing its characters.  The shadows themselves become menacing figures and there's no suggestion that Count Orlok's vampire is anything but a grotesque monster. 

Murnau's next seminal film came in 1924 with The Last Laugh starring Emil Jannings.  The film is the greatest in the director's oeuvre, but also its simplest.  A hotel doorman, who takes great pride in his position and his uniform, finds both stripped from him as his age begins to interfere with his duties.  In losing his status, the entire world seems to turn against him.  Without giving away the ending, that's the plot and it's as basic as they come.

Of course in Murnau's hands (with a great assist from Jannings in the lead role) The Last Laugh becomes more than its humble story.  We feel the glitz, glamor and pride of our doorman in every early moment.  And when his idyllic existence is stripped from him, the hotel transforms into a terrifying exterior with desolate halls.  Using everything from lighting to complex (for their time) tracking shots, The Last Laugh is a wonder to behold and shows Murnau in full control of the medium.

Faust, Murnau's last effort filmed in his native Germany before moving to Hollywood, follows the efforts of the devil to win a bet with God by corrupting the title character.  The elderly Faust is tempted with the knowledge to cure a plague in his town, then with youth.  Faust becomes arrogant and prideful, but manages to find redemption through love.

While not as good as The Last Laugh or Nosferatu, Faust gives us one of the great images in cinema as Mephisto, the devil's agent on earth, towers over Faust's town spreading his demonic wings and the plague.  Jannings is once again back as Mephisto and is perfect as the sly demon.  Murnau's trademark use of light and shadow is again on full display here. If the film has a failing, it is in the handling of the central love story.  The second act drags a bit after the suspenseful opening and before the dramatic climax.

There are no such issues with Murnau's next: 1927's Sunrise.  His first American film is a love story, but one we don't often see.  A cheating husband ponders killing his wife, but, when the moment comes, cannot bring himself to do it.  Terrified, she escapes, he chases her, and the couple experience a magical day in the city that brings them closer than they have ever been.

The film doesn't have the signature images that marked The Last Laugh, Nosferatu or even Faust, but every frame of Sunrise serves and enforces the story, the lighting seems to change with the characters' moods.  When the couple lose themselves in a romantic moment and walk into traffic, you feel both the danger as the traffic flies by them (and us) and the inevitability that nothing can touch them.  Not on this day.

While Sunrise may be about as perfect as silent cinema gets, it was not well-received in its time.  The combination of poor box office and the move to the talkies led to significant studio interference on his next two films, 4 Devils and City Girl.  Fox Films demanded a happier ending for the former.  For the latter, they took Murnau's silent, let another director reshoot scenes and release it as a talkie.

Frustrated, Murnau started work on Tabu, ultimately financing the film himself.  It became his first American hit, but he did not live long enough to reap the spoils of his effort.

When I think about what Murnau might have done in the 1930s and beyond it breaks my heart.  He never got to make his talkie or work with some of the great actors of the era.  Fritz Lang, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock all got their start in the silent era and their masterpieces came much later.  Imagine what Murnau might have done.

Sadly, any promise of further Murnau masterpieces must remain a dream.  The director created not just some of the best films of the silent era, but some of the greatest of any era.  If you have not seen The Last Laugh or Sunrise or Nosferatu, do yourself a favor and check them out.

And wonder what might have been.

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1928: When Movies Were the Greatest Thing Since... Ummm....

Welcome to 1928!  The U.S. is still a year away from the Great Depression, but there is plenty going on in the world.  The first ever yo-yo factory opens in California.  A first class stamp costs two cents.  The home pregnancy test is invented.  And, in Davenport, Iowa, Otto Rohwedder invents the first bread slicing machine.  So, when someone says "That's the greatest thing since sliced bread," you now have fodder for a smartass response.

In Hollywood, we get the on-screen debut of Humphrey Bogart, Mutual Film Corporation becomes RKO Pictures, one of the major Hollywood studios, and the first appearance of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Plane Crazy.  Germaine Dulac directs the first surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, beating Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou by a year.  And Carl Theodor Dreyer's influential The Passion of Joan of Arc is released.

The big story in movies however remains the sound revolution.  If 1927 saw the pebble called The Jazz Singer thrown into the Tinseltown pond, 1928 is where we feel the ripples.  Paramount announces in 1928 it will no longer produce silents.  MGM released White Shadows in the South Seas, which (like The Jazz Singer) is part silent and part talkie, and we hear the studio's mascot Leo the Lion roar for the first time.  The studios agreed on a technology both to produce movies and to retrofit studios for sound.  Warner Brothers produces the first all-talking film.  Th list goes on.

Perhaps the biggest impact of sound was the ascension of Walt Disney thanks to Mickey Mouse.  After losing the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Universal, Disney created Mickey.  The mouse's second feature, Steamboat Willie was released in November 1928 as the first cartoon with synchronized sound.  Audiences went crazy.  Over the next ten years, Disney would build an empire on short films and merchandise, culminating in his blockbuster feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 (we will get there eventually).

Watch list for 1928?  I'll be checking in with D.W. Griffith as he nears the end of his directing career with The Battle of the Sexes.  I will definitely be rewatching Steamboat Willie.  I also have The Passion of Joan of Arc, John Ford's Four Sons and Emil Jannings in The Last Command on tap.  And of course Charlie Chaplin is back with The Circus.  As always, if you have suggestions feel free to offer them in the comments below.

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