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
Monday, 22 April 2013
Directed by Russell Mack
Starring Edward Everett Horton, Esther Ralston, Laura La Plante
Produced by Pathé Exchange
Renowned lawyer Richard "Dickie" Smith is all over the papers for a recent high-profile acquittal he successfully tried, but back home he has nothing but problems.
His wife Madeleine and her mother believe (and rightfully so) that he is a philanderer. He is all business during the day, but once eight o'clock hits, his personality switches and he chases every skirt in sight.
This proves particularly problematic on the day he is trying out a new secretary, the beautiful Kitty "Minty" Minter. He's unimpressed with her typing and dictation skills, but once the clock chimes he's only too pleased to watch her "wiggle."
Complicating matters further, Minty's friend Diane O'Dare is looking for a divorce from her vaudevillian performer husband The Great Zero and wants to take advantage of Smith's sexual proclivities to get him to take the case.
Smith sets up a late night rendezvous with both Minty and Diane, but Dickie's mother-in-law won't let him leave the house. Fortunately, The Great Zero shows up to ask Smith's permission to impersonate the lawyer in his act. Once the actor dons some make up, his resemblance to Smith is uncanny. The doppelgänger gives the lothario the perfect means to sneak out.
Now Smith and The Great Zero have switched places, but can they carry out the ruse? And what will the impersonator do when, surprise!, Madeleine returns home early from her trip?
Lets be clear up front: Lonely Wives is not a good movie. No way, no how.
The direction takes its cue from silent films ten years older. It's a series of medium shots, filming the action from the same angles repeatedly. It's so stagey, you expect if the camera ever did pull back, you'd see footlights.
The actors don't do anything to assuage these concerns. They talk and behave as if in a theater with an audience. There are even bizarre pauses after the laugh lines. Every line sounds like it belongs in a play, not a movie.
This movie does have a little to recommend though. For one thing, this is about as pre-Code as a film can get. For those unaware, the "Code" in question is the Hays Code, adopted in 1930 but not enforced until 1934, which regulated the content of films based on moral concerns. Every other line of dialogue in Lonely Wives is a double entendre that would have definitely not made it past the censors.
Some examples (courtesy of IMDB):
Smith: [Attempting to ask her out] What have you got on tonight?
Minter: Nothing I can't get out of. Why?
or
Smith: Oh, you have a pretty mouth!
Minter: Aw, I like your moustache.
Smith: Really? Well, shall we introduce them?
So if you've heard the term pre-Code and wondered what that was about, Lonely Wives is a good primer.
The other noteworthy element if the film is technical. In several scenes, Horton plays both Dickie and The Great Zero and, through the magic of double exposure, the two appear on screen together.
The effect is seamless, so much so that I wondered at first if it was a different actor. There are movies made today using green screens that don't carry off the effect convincingly.
Unfortunately for Lonely Wives, if I'm reaching for specific snippets of dialogue and a special effect as the primary selling points of a movie, it cannot be all that great. I'm sure this would have been wonderful on a stage 80 years ago. Sadly, on the big screen, Lonely Wives is only...
*1/2 out of *****
Friday, 19 April 2013
Starring The Marx Brothers
Produced by Paramount Pictures
The Marx Brothers stow away on an ocean liner.
Hilarity ensues.
Do you really need more plot?
Okay, now I get The Marx Brothers. Sort of.
For most of its runtime, Monkey Business has no real plot except for allowing the comedy troupe to run amok on a cruise ship. The sheer anarchy they represent within the ordered world of this boat is loaded with potential humor and the characters mine every bit of it.
For half the movie, we basically get a series of skits involving the characters trying to outwit the crew and passengers of the ship. Groucho fast talks his way into the captain's quarters with Chico and manages to get dinner before being chased out. Harpo hides within a puppet show and almost fools the captain into believing he's a wooden doll. Zeppo of course takes the opportunity to hit on the ladies on each deck when he's not outrunning security. It's each of the brothers being put to their best use without ever overstaying their welcome.
There's an energy to the action that keeps the film moving. Unlike the static shots that marked the previous Marx films, the camera here is every bit as fidgety as the brothers. The director doesn't simply shoot the action; he maximizes the humor of each scene.
Where the movie fumbles is when the script decides it should focus on a plot. Once we introduce a mob boss plot, you can almost here the film let out an exasperated sigh and mutter "Fun's over, guys. The studio execs just showed up."
That's not to say there's no fun to be had during Monkey Business' second half. It's just that the breakneck pace slows to a crawl and the jokes are fewer and less funny.
All in all, this is the best realization of the potential demonstrated by the hijinks of the Marx Brothers. I really wish the story would stop getting in their way.
***1/2 out of *****
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