Saturday, 11 May 2013
Friday, 10 May 2013
Directed by Archie Mayo
Starring John Barrymore, Marian Marsh and Donald Crisp
Produced by Warner Bros.
This usually where I would do the plot summary, so here it goes:
A guy who is teaching music actually has mind control powers and takes control of a beautiful woman making her fall in love with him. It ends badly for them. The end.
There's obviously a lot more to Svengali, but that's the gist.
I hated this film. It's sloppily constructed, overacted and dull.
How so? The film wants to set up Svengali as this mythical, evil yet tragic monster of a man, someone who would take control of a woman's mind and make her commit suicide. Or who would control the woman he lusts for and force her to love him.
And how do you build such a beast? By making him the center of a comedic, almost slapstick opening, of course. Have this evil, tragic figure give music lessons to a terrible singer, rolling his eyes and cringing the whole time. If he's silly, we will take him even more seriously at the end, right?
I don't know if the thought was to combine the pathos and comedy of a Charlie Chaplin film with the horror and tragedy of Lon Chaney, but that appears to be the goal. And it's about as effective as mixing oil and water and throwing in some pickles for good measure. It's a recipe that just never comes together.
You could make the argument that the true purpose of Svengali is to give John Barrymore a reason to put on a lot of make up and mug for the camera. There it succeeds in spades. Barrymore seems unaware that the over-emotive acting necessary for silent films is not necessary in a talkie. Your movements can be more subtle.
Any of the above could be slightly forgivable if Svengali was entertaining on some level. It's not. It's repetitive and dull. In its comedic moments, it approaches its punchlines with all the grace of my three year old pretending to be a ninja. It grabs its jokes and pummels them into submission.
When it is time for drama, we get the same moments over and over again, with the added problem of Barrymore delivering his lines with the speed of a cartoon turtle. It's excruciating to endure.
What's good about Svengali? The lighting effect that happens with Barrymore's face when he is hypnotizing someone is kind of neat. Other than that....
* out of *****
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Starring Bebe Daniels, Ricardo Cortez, Dudley Digges
Produced by Warner Bros.
Detective Sam Spade (NOT played by Humphrey Bogart) takes on the case of a woman with a mysterious request. After Sam's partner is killed trailing a man who himself turns up dead.
Spade finds himself trapped between a woman who may be the only one he can ever truly love and a mysterious man who will stop at nothing to acquire a certain avian-themed trophy.
Can Sam find the bird, end up with the girl and escape the police?
The second you say the words "The Maltese Falcon," certain images and words come to mind.
Bogey. Peter Lorre. "The stuff that dreams are made of."
None of that is here. Instead, we get Ricardo Cortez and Otto Matieson. And the final lines of The Maltese Falcon in 1931 come nowhere near Spade's iconic final words a decade later.
Rather than fight the comparison, let's embrace it. The biggest difference between this version and its more famous remake is its tone. The Sam Spade of 1931 as played with Cortez is playful and cheery, even when the chips seem to be down. Gone is Bogart's world-weary approach. This Spade is more Bugs Bunny, a character who will come out on top because... well, he will.
That creates a big problem in the 1931 version as Cortez' acting combined with the script strip any tension away from the movie. It's hard to worry about your hero when he spends half of the film practically winking at the camera.
The other big difference here is the pre-Code aspect of the film. We get shots of femme fatale Ruth Wonderly in a bathtub, her body just inches away from revealing too much. The homosexual undertones of Gutman's relationship with his henchman are explicit here.
I do like a lot of the acting here. Cortez is having a ball, Bebe Daniels' Ruth is pitch perfect in every scene and Mathieson's portrayal of Cairo is suitably creepy.
However, all of the movie's problems can be summed up in the film's final moments. Spade shares a moment with the woman he was doomed to love, but has to turn it into a joke and a guffaw. There's no sense of lingering pain as the credits roll. Just the inconsistency that was there throughout the movie.
There is a masterpiece version of The Maltese Falcon. This isn't it. This is merely a good version that suffers from inconsistencies in acting styles and tone, deficiencies made all the more apparent when this tale is spun ten years later.
*** out of *****
Monday, 6 May 2013
Starring Leo Carrillo, Constance Cummings, Robert Young
Produced by Columbia Pictures Corporation
John Smith is an up and coming architect. He has great friends. He's just been hired to build a hotel in Florida. He only has one small problem...
His name isn't John Smith. It's Marco Ricca. And Marco is the son of Tony Ricca, a prominent mob boss engaged in a war with Mike Palmiero and his clan.
Shortly after arriving in Florida, Smith ends up at a Palmiero party and meets the fetching Maria, Mike's daughter. Being the children of rival gangsters, the two immediately fall in love.
Mike is a protective father who begins sniffing out Maria's new beau. Can the couple end their families' hatred? Or will they become victims of the violence?
The Guilty Generation is not at all what I was expecting.
On its face, the movie is a Romeo and Juliet tale set against the backdrop of the Italian mafia with a supporting turn from Boris Karloff as the head of the Ricca clan.
However, about 20 minutes in, a strange thing happens. Leo Carrillo appears on the screen as Mike Palmiero and, scene by scene, he takes the film over. We spend more time with him worrying over his daughter and this stranger that's come into her life than we do with couple. And when the lovers do get together, their single-minded focus becomes how Mike will respond when they elope.
It's always odd to watch the film recalibrate itself from a film about star-crossed lovers to a film about an enraged father. That said, I think it works. Carrillo is so good here as the bad guy that we want to spend time with him. He claims to want to end his gang war, but it is clear he wants to do it on his terms. Only if Ricca loses more than him is he willing to call a truce. In the end, we want to see which code of honor means more to him: that of a father or that of a kingpin.
Which is ultimately where the movie falters. The tension in the film is all about when Smith will be discovered as a Ricca and how Mike will react. You'd think it could go one of two ways (he either kills Marco or lets his daughter be happy). Instead, the film ties everything up through a third option which manages to be both random and unearned.
Despite a clunky love story and a shoddy climax, Carrillo gives me enough to recommend The Guilty Generation. But just barely.
*** out of *****
Sunday, 5 May 2013
Kristen of Journeys in Classic Film and I are hosting a blogathon this July! Exciting, right?
RIGHT?
The "What Price Hollywood" Blogathon will run from July 7 through 13 and focus on films about Tinseltown. About a hundred years ago, the center of the film universe began its permanent shift to Hollywood and we want to take a look at any and all films about making films.
Want to contribute? Of course you do! To see your name in lights, all you need to do is shoot me an email at to100yearsofmovies[at]verizon[dot]net and let me know your name, your site and which movie you want to cover. I will keep a running list here.
We want to cover all of Hollywood's introspection, from the silent era to films hitting theaters today. We will have graphics and all sorts of tomfoolery for this 'thon so feel free to participate and check back in with all of the contributors.
Adaptation - Nick Jobe, Your Face!
The Artist - Tony Cogan, Coog's Film Blog
The Bad and the Beautiful - Will, Exploding Helicopter
Ed Wood - Pat, 100 Years of Movies
Films about Hollywood Scandals - Kristen, Journeys in Classic Film
The Player - Mark, Three Rows Back
Stand-In - Duke Mantee, Spoilers
Sunset Boulevard - Chuck Boonsweet, Boonsweet & Bucklesworth
RIGHT?
The "What Price Hollywood" Blogathon will run from July 7 through 13 and focus on films about Tinseltown. About a hundred years ago, the center of the film universe began its permanent shift to Hollywood and we want to take a look at any and all films about making films.
Want to contribute? Of course you do! To see your name in lights, all you need to do is shoot me an email at to100yearsofmovies[at]verizon[dot]net and let me know your name, your site and which movie you want to cover. I will keep a running list here.
We want to cover all of Hollywood's introspection, from the silent era to films hitting theaters today. We will have graphics and all sorts of tomfoolery for this 'thon so feel free to participate and check back in with all of the contributors.
Adaptation - Nick Jobe, Your Face!
The Artist - Tony Cogan, Coog's Film Blog
The Bad and the Beautiful - Will, Exploding Helicopter
Ed Wood - Pat, 100 Years of Movies
Films about Hollywood Scandals - Kristen, Journeys in Classic Film
The Player - Mark, Three Rows Back
Stand-In - Duke Mantee, Spoilers
Sunset Boulevard - Chuck Boonsweet, Boonsweet & Bucklesworth
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