WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?
Posted: January 19th, 2008, 3:19 pm
I thought that it might be a good idea to have a separate thread for Sielnts and Pre-Codes everybody has seen... Here I go my my first "contribution"
I watched a very nice print of "The Smart Set" (1928) taped off TCM. In it William Haines plays a pampered Polo player, full of himself who's chosen to take part of the American Polo Team. Alice Day is his love interest Polly; Jack Holt is the team's Captain and Hobart Bosworth is Alice Day's dad.
Although at times the antics of the character played by William Haines become sort of annoying and it's hard to root for his conceited character at first, in all I enjoyed the film very much and thought it had quite a contemporary feeling to it, and I must say it's mainly due to Haines' acting and persona (notwithstanding the fact that you may not like it all the time).
To discover William Haines' persona in some of the films I've had the chance to watch (two of them thanks to an American pal -the other is "Fast Life" 1932) has been very enlightening; I feel that until you have not seen a certain actor onscreen and you have not experienced one of his performances, you don't really know the subject matter, no matter how much you may have read about him (prior to seeing Haines' onscreen for the first time I had read his Biography). Thank God for Movie channels like TCM, which preserve the Cinematic Heritage of the USA.
Up to recently, when it came to Silents and early talkies, I had pictured the hero, the villain, the sensitive guy (Lew Ayres, Douglass Drumbille), the debonair man of the world (Bill Powell), the tough guys (Cagney, G. Robinson), the Macho He-Man (Gable) et al, but not this kind of pampered, sometimes annoying, immature, devil-may-care but ultimately charming kind of youngsters played by Bill Haines; always playing and fooling around, who try to win their ladies with all kinds of clowning and shenanigans. ("The Smart Set" and "The Girl Said No" are good examples of his Persona)
The film has brand new score and I liked it. Alice Day (Marceline's sister) is quite charming as Bill's love interest and responds well to him; Jack Holt is good as usual and Harry Gribbon, who plays Haines' valet, is very funny in a couple of scenes with "Master Van Buren". It was good to see Julia Swayne Gordon as Haines' mother.
I watched a very nice print of "The Smart Set" (1928) taped off TCM. In it William Haines plays a pampered Polo player, full of himself who's chosen to take part of the American Polo Team. Alice Day is his love interest Polly; Jack Holt is the team's Captain and Hobart Bosworth is Alice Day's dad.
Although at times the antics of the character played by William Haines become sort of annoying and it's hard to root for his conceited character at first, in all I enjoyed the film very much and thought it had quite a contemporary feeling to it, and I must say it's mainly due to Haines' acting and persona (notwithstanding the fact that you may not like it all the time).
To discover William Haines' persona in some of the films I've had the chance to watch (two of them thanks to an American pal -the other is "Fast Life" 1932) has been very enlightening; I feel that until you have not seen a certain actor onscreen and you have not experienced one of his performances, you don't really know the subject matter, no matter how much you may have read about him (prior to seeing Haines' onscreen for the first time I had read his Biography). Thank God for Movie channels like TCM, which preserve the Cinematic Heritage of the USA.
Up to recently, when it came to Silents and early talkies, I had pictured the hero, the villain, the sensitive guy (Lew Ayres, Douglass Drumbille), the debonair man of the world (Bill Powell), the tough guys (Cagney, G. Robinson), the Macho He-Man (Gable) et al, but not this kind of pampered, sometimes annoying, immature, devil-may-care but ultimately charming kind of youngsters played by Bill Haines; always playing and fooling around, who try to win their ladies with all kinds of clowning and shenanigans. ("The Smart Set" and "The Girl Said No" are good examples of his Persona)
The film has brand new score and I liked it. Alice Day (Marceline's sister) is quite charming as Bill's love interest and responds well to him; Jack Holt is good as usual and Harry Gribbon, who plays Haines' valet, is very funny in a couple of scenes with "Master Van Buren". It was good to see Julia Swayne Gordon as Haines' mother.