WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[feaito]

Yesterday thanks to Carrie I saw a rare 1930 Paramount film starring Nancy Carroll and Richard Arlen titled "Dangerous Paradise", directed by Bill Wellman and based upon a story by Joseph Conrad.

Ther film is really average, but Nancy Carroll gives a spirited performance as a showgirl stranded in an Asian location full of leering, lecherous characters (Warner Oland, Francis McDonald and Clarence Wilson). Arlen is a handsome young man who lives isolated on an island and who keeps himself away from love; obviously he and Carroll fall in love. Arlen's performance is below average compared with the other talkies I have seen him in.

[Jezebel38]

Yesterday thanks to Carrie I saw a rare 1930 Paramount film starring Nancy Carroll and Richard Arlen titled "Dangerous Paradise", directed by Bill Wellman and based upon a story by Joseph Conrad.

Oooohh....I'm envious! I'd love to see everything Nancy Carroll is in. Your plot description sounded familiar, so I looked up on IMDb - this is a remake of the silent VICTORY (1919) which I've seen and is super!

[feaito]

Jez, I sent you a PM.

[HowardRoarkSheffield]

I've recently seen two Silents with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in. The first was The Power Of The Press and the second A Woman Of Affairs with Garbo and Gilbert.

[knitwit45]

Woman of Affairs is my favorite Garbo film, in fact, my favorite silent. When she walks out of that hospital room, I dissolve into a puddle of tears.

[JackFavell]

I thought Power of the Press was just OK, though the scenes in the newsroom were quite good and Doug Jr. is very excellent. A Woman of Affairs is a great movie, but Flesh and the Devil beats it out for favorite Garbo film for me.

Our Modern Maidens is another excellent movie, a sequel to Our Dancing Daughters, and I think this is the one where Doug Jr. does impressions of famous stars, including his own dad, Doug Sr.!

Have you seen any of Doug Jr.'s precodes? I love Union Depot and The Life of Jimmy Dolan.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've watched 2 precodes, Party Husband with James Rennie and Dorothy MacKaill, about an equal marriage when both partners work and put in long hours and misunderstandings abound and the marriage breaks up, everything works out alright in the end, this kind of film has been done a few times and it's to their credit that this is one of the later ones I've watched but I still found it very watchble. Dorothy Mackaill is an unsung heroine of precodes.

Then one of my favourite precodes actresses Marian Marsh with one of my favourite precode actors Warren William in Under Eighteen, Marsh playing the younger sister of Anita Page who when she hits the bad times with her husband seeks a divorce but can't afford it, marsh, rather cheesed off with the idea of marriage looks to the predatory William for the two hundred dollars her sister needs. The best scenes in this film are when Marsh is modelling a fur for William and the party at his penthouse, now that is a precode scene. Marsh is so utterly charming and quite brilliant as the young gamine, who is so attractive but knows it not.

[JackFavell]

Marian Marsh is so good! I haven't seen a movie yet with her that she didn't shine in. Ditto MacKaill.

[charliechaplinfan]

Yes, they're great aren't they?

[JackFavell]

I thought they were all excellent. Beery was terribly good, no ham here. The whole thing was very spare.

[Rita Hayworth]

Woman of Affairs is my favorite Garbo film, in fact, my favorite silent. When she walks out of that hospital room, I dissolve into a puddle of tears.

I know how you feel about it ... I am the same way Knitty!

[ChiO]

On the cusp of the Pre-Code Era....

The Furies were avengers who arose from drops of blood exacting retribution for crimes of blood. How to show that horror on the screen? And, if shown, how to describe the horror? Luckily, I don’t have to try with CRIME WITHOUT PASSION (Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur 1934):

[youtube][/youtube]

Lee Gentry (Claude Rains) is an attorney who saves the damned, but not as a do-gooder seeking justice. He is a Nietzschean with additional cynicism. He has the skill of Clarence Darrow, but with the ideals of Leopold and Loeb – making this film an anticipation of COMPULSION and ROPE, but inverted and turned inside-out.

Stringing women on romantically and, perhaps, occasionally with a perverse narcissistic love (it is difficult to tell because he may not even know whether it is love, narcissism or self-loathing), he kills one of these women – Carmen Brown (Margo) – apparently by accident, but he did wish her out of the way in order to pursue another (An American Tragedy). He immediately is able to establish alibis and frame a man. When Carmen reappears because he had only severely injured her, he panics and, in public view, kills the man he had framed. The Furies prevail. As the title reminds us, a dispassionate crime is more heinous than a passionate crime.

Hecht and MacArthur (co-writers as well as co-directors and co-producers) not only make great use of their Chicago backgrounds in taking advantage of the Leopold & Loeb and Theodore Dreiser themes, their combination hard-boiled, dark and witty dialogue at times prepares one for Screwball Comedy (TWENTIETH CENTURY was made the same year; this was their first production and first directorial effort). The cinematography by Lee Garmes (MOROCCO, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, SCARFACE, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, CAUGHT, THE LUSTY MEN) is first-rate as usual. He also did much of the directing (he is given credit as Associate Director, but he claimed to have done most of the directing). I assumed that he was responsible for the stunning opening sequence, but credit for the special effects and montage goes to Slavko Vorkapich, co-director (with Robert Florey) of the astounding THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA.

And Claude Rains, who appears in his second U.S. film (he didn’t appear much in his first) and who, at his worst, makes every movie better.

[moira finnie]

I envy you, ChiO. Being a huge Claude Rains fan, as well as a Slavko Vorkapich nut since witnessing how his art direction could transform a film after seeing I Bury the Living (1958), I've been trying to catch the entire movie of Crime Without Passion for some time. I guess I am going to have to try one of those DVD-r versions of this movie soon after your intriguing endorsement. Have you ever seen the Hecht-MacArthur movie, The Scoundrel (1935)? That movie features a relatively young Noel Coward as a Machiavellian publisher, reportedly based on the notorious behavior of Horace Liveright, who had died just before this movie. I have read some interesting things about this film too.

More can be seen here about the influential Slavko, including segments of some of Vorkapich's experimental work. A compilation of Vorkapich's montages from the '20s & '30s can be seen below:
[youtube][/youtube]

[ChiO]

Who ever remembers No. 2?

Went to The Patio ( http://patiotheater.net/0_6/About+Us/ ), about 4 miles from home, last night to see HIGH TREASON (Maurice Elvey), the second British talkie. Like the first, BLACKMAIL (Alfred Something-or-Other), it was first made as a Silent (released in 1929), then re-released six months later (1930) as a talkie. The sound version was thought to be lost, but a fine print was found in Alaska and restored by the Library of Congress, with partners. We were told last night that, except for a Library of Congress screening for a limited audience, we were the first to see this version since 1930.

It was based on a failed play, and the film apparently didn't do much better. Set in the distant future -- 1940 -- London looks like downtown Manhattan with biplanes and zeppelins littering the sky. A train goes into a tunnel -- under the English Channel. It's Fantasy, clearly borrowing heavily from METROPOLIS. The United States of Europe is headed for war with the Empire States of the Atlantic. Will they be stopped by the maneuverings of the Peace League? Or will the evil cabal of multinational weapons manufacturers win, as they always have? Much exposition must be listened to in order to find out.

There's also Romance, Music, Dance, very stage theatrical acting, and women taking off clothes or wearing titillating clothing in ways that don't advance the narrative (which is apparently the reason the movie was banned in New York). Starring Jameson Thomas, Benita Hume (aka Mrs. Ronald Colman aka Mrs. George Sanders), Basil Gill and, though I missed him, the first screen appearance (uncredited) of Raymond Massey.

Great fun with some very entertaining moments, but mostly one of those "Well, I'm glad I got to see it" movies.

All preceded by the very exciting -- and even more entertaining -- Episode 8 of COMMANDO CODY: SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE, The Hydrogen Hurricane (Harry Keller 1955). Commando (Judd Holdren) saves the World...in style. Also with Aline Towne, Denver Pyle (the Bad Guy) and -- are you reading this Moira? -- one of Hoosierland's finest actors, as Commando's side-kick, Richard Crane. This alone was worth the $5 admission.